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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 YOUNG FRANCE 
 AND NEW AMERICA
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 La Yougoslavie (The Southern Slavs) 
 
 — Payot, Paris 
 
 GBAMMAIBE ELEMENTAIBE DE LA LANGUE SEBBE 
 
 — Delagrave, Pa/iis 
 
 (in collaboration with A. Ouyevitch) 
 
 iMAiGiN AIRES, poems — Edition romane, Paris 
 
 TRANSLATIONS 
 
 PSYCHOLOGIE ET SOCIOLO-" 
 
 QIE, by Professor J. M. 
 Baldwin 
 
 Elements de Psycho-So- 
 CIOLOGIE, by Professor 
 Ellwood 
 
 'Giard et Brieve, Paris 
 
 L'Unite Yougoslave, manifeste de la jennesse 
 serbe, create et Slovene reunie — Plon, Paris 
 
 Judith, trag^die, by F. Hebbel 
 
 — Nouvelle Revue FranQaise, Paris 
 
 (in collaboration with G. Gallimard)
 
 YOUNG FRANCE 
 AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 BY 
 
 PIERRE DE LANUX 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1917 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPTEIGHT, 1917, 
 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published, Novemlber, 1917.
 
 
 TO 
 
 PROFESSOR WILLIAM GARDNER HALE 
 
 AND TO 
 
 MARICE RUTLEDGE HALE 
 
 FOR MANY REASONS, THIS BOOK 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
 171S6C8
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 These are the reflections of a Frenchman who spent 
 the year 1917 in America. They deal with the 
 present events and those from the near past, but 
 their expression is first inspired by the thought of 
 the near future, that is to say, the period that will 
 begin when this war ends. My purpose was to 
 define and to sum up the possibilities which 
 Franco-American relations will offer tomorrow, as 
 well on intellectual as on concrete grounds. 
 
 This subject would be much too wide for one 
 man and for one book, but we shall concentrate on 
 the results of co-operation between elements of the 
 younger generation of both countries. The present 
 book is written for the young men and women of 
 America who are interested in the present life of 
 France. 
 
 Those who know well my country, having seen 
 her and helped her during the present trial, will 
 find here some facts which are already familiar to 
 them, and I fear that they will resent my pretension
 
 viii FOREWORD 
 
 to teach them what they know better than I do my- 
 self. Other readers will charge me with excessive 
 optimism or with "youthful" severity for the gen- 
 eration that preceded mine. It may be that they 
 are right; it may be also that they lack the faith and 
 vision that is in many of us. 
 
 I wish that, in order to face a state of things 
 which is quite new, one could bring a quite new 
 attitude of judgment. This is precisely what may 
 be expected from Americans, as it is one of their 
 best national qualities. We live in a time when the 
 fruits of thought are ripening with strange and 
 terrible rapidity, and many Utopias of yesterday 
 have already passed to the rank of the common- 
 place. Let us, therefore, deal with today's Utopia 
 with the respect that is owed to the commonplace of 
 tomorrow. . . . 
 
 Much has been said and written about Franco- 
 American relationships. Since one hundred and 
 thirty-nine years, many great and less great minds 
 have expressed concordant views on that subject. 
 Common interpretation of republican principles, 
 love for country and for freedom, joined to that 
 idealist and generalizing tendency that made our 
 two nations express their Declarations in terms that 
 are valuable, not for one country alone, but for the 
 whole world, from the very beginning of our con-
 
 FOREWORD ix 
 
 temporary history — how often did historians and 
 orators dwell on that theme, developing it with 
 more eloquence than I could bring here ! 
 
 But a storm has shaken all the values of the earth. 
 Those which will be found intact, after the crisis is 
 over, one might well call them eternal. The friend- 
 ship of the two Republics is one of them. And the 
 values which will be bom from the present over- 
 dirowing, we have to make clear as soon as possible, 
 and confront them with our past, so as to know 
 what remains. Among these new values, and in the 
 first rank, there is the realization of common stan- 
 dards in life, the sense of common task and com- 
 mon responsibilities, and, above all, the value of 
 mutual knowledge between the youth of France and 
 America. For, after all our old reasons for mu- 
 tual understanding, there exist now new reasons, 
 and indeed, much more powerful ones, which I 
 shall try to set forth here. 
 
 Let me first extend my thanks to all those who 
 helped me in my task by their generous encourage- 
 ments, and especially mention the reviews which 
 published some parts of the present work: The 
 Nevj Republic, The New France, The Dial, The 
 Nation, etc. And let me express my gratefulness 
 to the authors of remarkable translations from 
 French writers whom I quoted in this book: to Miss
 
 X FOREWORD 
 
 Virginia Hale, to Miss Elizabeth Eyre, to Mr. 
 Joyce Kilmer, to Mr. Deems Taylor, and to Dr. 
 Ernest Hart, the last named having translated the 
 poems which occur in the body of the section on 
 Verhaeren. 
 
 P. L. 
 New York, October, 1917.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword vii 
 
 I 
 
 Formation of the Present French Generation 1 
 
 Rapid history of ten years. Awakening to interna- 
 tional problems. Hard training to civic and national 
 life. Revival in physical life. Foreign influences. Also 
 revival of tradition. The spirit of 1914. Who gave the 
 best expression of it. The war. The younger elements 
 and what they bring. 
 
 II 
 
 About America in 1917 35 
 
 The capital fact of the present evolution. Its prophets. 
 America's work during the first part of the war. Con- 
 ditions of international leadership. Perils of '"Know- 
 nothingism." The value of common experience. The 
 value of common purpose. War and Democracy. The 
 pacifists from the trenches. Our "prussianization." 
 Common sense and our aims. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Promises of Concrete Co-operation .... 63 
 
 New conditions of work in Europe, nearer to the 
 American conditions, because of the scarcity of men and 
 the necessity of rapid reconstruction. American methods 
 to be brought. The new spirit of economic activity in 
 France. A writer on French labour. An instance of 
 common task: co-operation in tlie countries which are 
 economically backward, but jealous of national independ- 
 ence, and will welcome the Franco-American enterprises.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 IV PACE 
 
 Literary Interchange 91 
 
 Forms of influence. Is external influence to be wel- 
 come? American writers who are known in France. 
 About French criticism. Translations of literature. 
 Educational exchanges. The philosophers. The literary 
 treasury of contemporary France. Our masters and el- 
 ders. Recent tendencies. Emile Verhaeren's interna- 
 tional value. The new poets of France: More children 
 of Walt Whitman. Schools, groups and critics. The 
 Reviews. War poems. And then? 
 
 Music in France. 
 
 V 
 Conclusions 142 
 
 History of mutual knowledge. False ideas about each 
 other. Principle of our exchanges. France's experience 
 and America's methods. Common task in the organiza- 
 tion of peace. The two nations who did most work un- 
 selfishly for the world. Psychology of our understanding. 
 Individual comradeship as a basis for our relations. Re- 
 sponsibilities. 
 
 Index of Proper Names Cited 151
 
 YOUNG FRANCE 
 AND NEW AMERICA
 
 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW 
 AMERICA 
 
 FORMATION OF THE PRESEINT FRENCH 
 GENERATION 
 
 Rapid historj- of ten years. Awakening to international 
 problems. Hard training to civic and national life. Revival 
 in physical life. Foreign influences. Also revival of tradition. 
 The spirit of 1914-. Who gave the best expression of it. The 
 war. The younger elements and what they bring. 
 
 "L'angoisse est necessaire aux races qui sont fortes 
 Et pour grandir encore, il leur faut le danger." 
 
 — EaiiLE Veehaehex. 
 
 This stuoy, or rather this rapid retrospective 
 glance, will not be given from the standpoint of the 
 historian. It will be just material for History to 
 come, and personal testimony rather than impartial 
 definitions. Many records like this will have to 
 be added in order to form even a sketch of the 
 recent past that will not be too incomplete. I shall 
 simply tell my national experience to my comrades 
 from the other side.
 
 2 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 It was a wonderful advantage to me to live in 
 contact with the best among the younger men and 
 women. They were writers, teachers, engineers or 
 artists, belonging to many classes and opinions; 
 they were also the labourers and the country peo- 
 ple with whom I lived when serving as a soldier. 
 To all of them I am indebted for what I am going 
 to tell about this present generation. So, if there 
 is beauty in the spectacle which they give, and 
 which I shall here describe, they deserve all ad- 
 miration for it. 
 
 Our parents gave us, as usually happens, some 
 splendid examples to follow, and, also, some ven- 
 erable standards to discard. As usually happens, 
 we discovered the latter before we acknowledged 
 the good to be kept. Or rather, the good was laid 
 in us without our being aware of it, and is probably 
 greater than our pride yet knows. 
 
 They were the children of 1870. They had been 
 brought up in France's darkest days, when defeat, 
 mutilation and isolation followed the factitious 
 prosperity of our Second Empire. At that time 
 France was absolutely alone ; so they took the habit, 
 for twenty years, of reasoning strictly on our forces, 
 our fate, practically ignoring the rest of the world. 
 
 Our generation, from our younger years on, was
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 3 
 
 used to go back for its models to other times than 
 the period which extends from 1870 to 1890. We 
 differed in our models, but we agreed to dislike 
 that period. It meant to us bad taste, prejudices, 
 moral fears, limited ideas, ugly fashions, Victori- 
 anism without even prestige, people being hypno- 
 tized by their recent defeat and spending their 
 forces in internal disputes which did not offer the 
 slightest interest to us. We were surprised by the 
 obstinate, obtrusive, negative hostilities of some na- 
 tionalists against the foreigners, of free thinkers 
 against the priests, of all creeds against each other. 
 We resented severely that they had not under- 
 stood their great XlXth century (of course it was 
 easier to us), and that they could not digest it. 
 Liberty, Equality and Fraternity were written 
 everywhere, even on prison doors, but we were irri- 
 tated not to find them in tlie acts of living persons. 
 Big things were done by men of exception, against 
 the others and without their help. I believe that 
 this was a period of transition and hesitation — not 
 of affirmation. A period when old and new stan- 
 dards were fighting each other unf ruitfully, because 
 men did not perceive the beauty and full meaning of 
 that conflict itself, and were not used to their own 
 mental emancipation. They spent their force for 
 small results when immense things were at stake,
 
 4 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 and they followed small men in a time when great 
 geniuses were living. What they took seriously 
 seemed to us to be obsolete; what we worshipped 
 made them smile. We envied a little their virtues, 
 and not at all their vices. And we were totally 
 disgusted by the lack of moral independence of 
 their lives. They said "realism" when they meant 
 "ugliness," and that single feature would be 
 enough to separate them from us. They lied to 
 themselves in their tastes, in their passions, in their 
 words. They were deeply sunk in lie. 
 
 I seem to speak resentfully, but I cannot forget 
 the old generals who dressed our young men in red 
 trousers to send them to a modem war. The ruling 
 class of 1870-1900 was more or less like these 
 brave chiefs. We felt that such a world was wait- 
 ing for new men. Now, we know that we were 
 right. But, at the same time, we can explain why 
 our elders were such; and we realize, too, that the 
 new men are not us, but the younger ones — who 
 know much that we ignore. 
 
 This is how things appeared when we were about 
 18. All national danger seemed remote and ab- 
 stract. There had been a bitter injustice com- 
 mitted against us in 1870, when Germany had torn 
 Alsace-Lorraine away from us, and we kept the hope 
 that this would be readjusted some time. But few
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 5 
 
 expected that readjustment from a war, since war 
 had proved to mean injustice. So we believed that 
 other people expected nothing from war. And we 
 came to lose the belief in the possibility of war itself. 
 After the generation which had suffered from the 
 ordeal of '71, people had grown to be compara- 
 tively indifferent to the various foreign problems 
 and conflicts which did not concern France immedi- 
 ately, because they believed that France could not 
 be involved against her will in an armed conflict. 
 And around us were flourishing in full prosperity 
 the ideas of the future, great social schemes, new 
 artistic impulses, preceding the time when the uni- 
 verse would be ready to receive them, preceding 
 the actual conditions, and Utopian only because of 
 that. We were enthusiastic about tliem, still some- 
 thing was warning us that instead of solving the old 
 problems of race, nationality, domination, they 
 simply neglected them, or rather solved them ab- 
 stractly, for the satisfaction of a few intelligences. 
 In fact, the problems remained open. Endeavours 
 to prevent future wars met with scepticism, or sank 
 into Utopian schemes. We had a feeling that a 
 greater light, all possible light, indeed, ought to 
 have been brought on the direct cause and risks of 
 European conflicts, which were obscure to many.^ 
 i"Thus the men in Europe who can really claim to have
 
 6 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 France was preparing to show the way, once more, 
 and we were passionately learning our business of 
 world-pioneers. We were in great, passionate, 
 earnest hesitations. We admired, in that time, An- 
 atole France and we admired Barres. I name these 
 two personifications of reformist and nationalistic 
 spirit, although, of course, for other young men the 
 same tendencies took other names. Barres told us 
 of the Earth and of the Dead, with arguments which 
 appealed to our deepest, truest conservative in- 
 stincts. And Anatole France, smiling, said: 
 "What hath been written by the dead shall be can- 
 celled by the living; otherwise the will of those who 
 are no more would impose itself upon those who are 
 still, and the dead would be the living, and the living 
 would be the dead." — And we knew that both were 
 true. 
 
 This antagonism could be felt in the long quarrel 
 about the programs of teaching. The question of 
 
 worked for peace are not those who wanted to disarm their 
 own country, to keep it neutral under all circumstances. . . . 
 The true peacemakers were those who grasped the real strug- 
 gle between the Entente and the Alliance, and proposed con- 
 crete improvements in the diplomacy about Africa, Asia Minor, 
 and the Far East. The men who had better solutions of the 
 Moroccan, Congo, and Balkan problems were the ones who 
 can claim now to have done their share of thinking for civiliza- 
 tion. . . . Those who saw the source of the friction and tried 
 to remedy it were the real internationalists." (Walter Lipp- 
 mann — The Stakes of Diplomacy.)
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 7 
 
 the programs in the Universities, which was more 
 of a political dispute for the men who fixed them, 
 was, for us, a question of choosing the knowledge 
 that would help us to the kind of life we wanted to 
 live. And what was that life? 
 
 This was being decided, little by little, as the 
 result of many influences. (Certainly more varied 
 influences than any other generation had received 
 before.) They came through new channels. We 
 practised more physical life than our fathers, and 
 that influenced our ways of living. (I shall dwell 
 again on this aspect of our formation.) We trav- 
 elled more. If I take my six best friends as exam- 
 ples, I find that one has been in Germany and 
 Tunisia, another in Russia and in Greece; the third 
 through Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil; the fourth 
 in California and Russia; the fifth in England, Italy, 
 Russia and North America; the sixth in Algeria, 
 Spain and Asia Minor; and I had, myself, at 27, 
 visited thirteen nations in Europe. Three other 
 friends of mine, being about 25, have founded a 
 vast and prosperous French enterprise in British 
 Columbia, after having been first around the world. 
 
 This was together the consequence and cause of 
 our learning foreign languages much more than it 
 had been done before. The time we spent in that
 
 8 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 work, however imperfect the knowledge that we 
 might reach, is a time we never regret. It opened 
 not only more possibilities for travelling, for easier 
 business, direct meeting of the people, but it gave us 
 the key to whole literatures, which, in their turn, 
 played a decisive part in our intellectual formation. 
 At least foreign language brought understanding of 
 the foreign spirit, a sense of what is relative and 
 what absolute in expression, and new reasons to love 
 our own language. 
 
 Some foreign works impressed us greatly. Dos- 
 toievsky after Tolstoi, Kipling after Dickens, Whit- 
 man after E. A. Poe, meant a great deal, not only to 
 writers, but to readers of any class or purpose. 
 (How many young men did I find in the French Am- 
 bulance Service, during this war, in Belgium or in 
 Macedonia, who were reading Walt Whitman's 
 "Wound Dresser," from the "Drum Taps"!) 
 
 All this was preparing the notion of universal con- 
 cern, which is so strong now in all of us. We got 
 trained to think beyond the frontiers. What I 
 called the disciples of Anatole France, looked there 
 mostly for foreign culture. The disciples of 
 Barre's looked there for danger. Elder people, 
 apart from few exceptions, spoke of danger and of 
 culture, but did not look there at all. They were 
 negative; they were just critical; they always knew
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 9 
 
 the reasons against doing things; they were im- 
 mensely far from America, whom they ignored and 
 feared. They might have prevented this war, 
 which from any standpoint is a failure, for all poli- 
 cies which led to it. They called it, afterwards, in- 
 evitable. But it was not. And as our generation 
 is dying in it, it has a certain right to state how 
 things did happen. 
 
 It was in 1905 that our hard training to civic and 
 national life began, with our awakening to danger, 
 and to the great fact that, now, everybody is con- 
 cerned with everything that happens in the world. 
 I insist upon this, because this explains all: our atti- 
 tude before the war, our stand in the war, and our 
 will after the war. 
 
 In 1904-5, came the Russo-Japanese conflict. 
 Most of us did not feel that we were very strongly 
 affected by it. Still we were. As soon as our 
 Russian ally had proved to be weaker, Germany 
 started her aggressive policy in the Moroccan ques- 
 tion. That year Charles Peguy published his 
 "cahier," Notre Patrie, about that precise week, that 
 very day when we realized the presence of danger: 
 "As every one, I had come back to Paris at 9 in the 
 morning; as every one, that is to say, as about eight 
 or nine hundred persons, I knew at half past eleven
 
 10 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 that a new period had just begun in the history of my 
 own life, in the history of this country, and certainly 
 in the history of the world." . . . "Every one, at 
 the same time, knew that the menace of a German in- 
 vasion was present, that it was there, that it was 
 really imminent." 
 
 "It was not a news like ordinary news — it went 
 from one man to another like a knowledge from 
 anterior life, a recognition of anterior certitude. 
 Indeed, each of us did find in himself the recog- 
 nition total, immediate, ready, immobile — of this 
 menace which was present. . . . Each man recog- 
 nized in himself, as if it were familiar and well- 
 known, this deep voice, this voice from inside, this 
 voice of long-buried memory." 
 
 Later, Germany provoked brutal incidents in 
 Alsace, which gave opportunity to notice that the 
 Reichstag, representing the German people, had no 
 authority whatever to disapprove a government 
 which had the support of the Emperor. In 1908 
 came the annexation of Bosnia by Austria, against 
 the will of the Serbian population, and this was the 
 direct source of the Balkan trouble and of the 
 European war. Now is it not the very image of our 
 subject and a symbol of our times: that in order to 
 write, in America, about France, I am obliged to 
 mention the annexation of Bosnia and to insist upon
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 11 
 
 it? I was a soldier at that time, and I had been in 
 Bosnia before. I remember my comrades asking 
 me to explain what was the connection between that 
 Turkish province and their possible going to battle 
 against the Prussians? Many of them did not be- 
 lieve that such a connection existed. 
 
 In 1911 Germany sent a warship to the Moroccan 
 coast. I remember the feeling we had, of air being 
 made irrespirable by that nation. We had to come, 
 little by little, in spite of ourselves, to adopt tlie feel- 
 ings and opinions of our fathers towards the Prus- 
 sians. We discovered our fatliers to be right, by 
 ourselves. We did not inherit the idea of revenge, 
 as the Germans always pretended. We thought it, 
 for a time, to be the remotest possible illusion. (In 
 1899, at the time of the Boer war and after the 
 Fashoda incidents, England was a hundred times 
 more unpopular than Germany in France, among the 
 young.) Germany having chosen the "big stick" 
 policy, we rediscovered, one by one, the elements of 
 old hostilities. The man from the people who had 
 been anti-militaristic for a time and who loved 
 his work and peace, got more and more impatient, 
 and realized that in Europe a group of powers was 
 acting systematically against us when nothing was to 
 fear from us. For tlie people of France were still 
 ready to do many new foolish things, but could
 
 12 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 never, never have been driven into an aggressive 
 war. We felt this drawback to the maintenance of 
 peace. But we were decided, and our friends and 
 allies with us, to maintain peace in spite of the 
 drawback. 
 
 In 1912 the Balkan war broke out. Four small 
 nations, in order to make their brothers free from 
 Turkish yoke, mobilized. The European govern- 
 ments refused to believe in a possible war, and when 
 it broke out they believed in the victory of the Turks. 
 When the Turks were defeated these governments 
 did not know how to prevent discord from arising 
 among the victors, and when this brought a second 
 war, in 1913, they could see that Austria and Ger- 
 many were responsible for it, and a splendid na- 
 tional insurrection ended pitifully in a slaughter 
 of allies because the Central Powers wanted the 
 weakening of Serbia and the rupture of the Balkan 
 league. 
 
 Even during these Balkan wars, many said in 
 France, "Let those people fight if they want to. We 
 have nothing to do with Balkanic aspirations." 
 Still, Serbian aspirations to independence meant the 
 end of the German ambition in "Mittel-Europa." 
 Some of us had a notion of that. So, at the news of 
 mobilization, in October, 1912, I had gone to
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 13 
 
 Serbia, and managed to see this crisis through. I 
 saw after a few weeks, as plainly as any man could 
 have done in my place, that the true enemy of Bal- 
 kanic freedom and peace was not only Turkey, but 
 Austria, and that the victories over the Turks were 
 already victories over the Germans; and that the 
 seed of terrible European troubles was in the op- 
 pression of the Southern Slavs by the Austrians. 
 One had but to be there and talk with the people, to 
 bring back invaluable observations. When I did 
 so, competent people did not refuse to believe me, 
 but they considered tliat the matter was not impor- 
 tant enough to pay much attention to it. 
 
 My deep conviction is that the peril could have 
 been checked in its beginning, in 1913, if we all had 
 had sufficient information and a strong feeling that 
 we were all threatened by it. That is why I believe 
 that the ignorance and indifference of the world is 
 the greatest, worst enemy of mankind and of peace. 
 And, above all, this war has to wipe out interna- 
 tional "know-nothingism." 
 
 On the 28th of June, 1914, the Austrian Crown 
 prince was killed by a Bosnian fanatic. 
 
 On the 3rd of August, 1914, as a consequence, 
 Germany declared war upon France. 
 
 But those ten years had prepared us for "I'Union
 
 14 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 Sacree." It was a part of our equipment for mo- 
 bilization. And the Kaiser did not know it. . . . 
 
 I come now to a most difficult part of my task, 
 which is to give the true portrait of the young man of 
 France at the eve of the war — his actions in the war 
 have been but a consequence of those morals of his, 
 that were moulded before. We have seen what had 
 influenced him. What was the result of it all? 
 Which ethics were ours in 1914? 
 
 I have a very high idea of them — of course, since 
 they were mine, but I begin to believe that there is 
 something even finer, and it is the ethics of the 
 young men who are now twenty and who had their 
 moral formation during the war. 
 
 We had, as has been said, to combine and recon- 
 cile the conservative impulses, the impulses for 
 reformation, in a peculiar national situation, and 
 to add to this the result of our own moral experi- 
 ences, which were rather rich and bold. (Some- 
 times innovation had led to an unexpected form of 
 tradition. Sport was a true returning to old 
 French sixteenth century habits.) 
 
 We gave to personal freedom and responsibility, 
 not to mention sincerity to oneself, an importance 
 which brought us nearer to American standards than 
 you believe. We felt immense, unlimited admira-
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 15 
 
 tion and reverence for our masters, who were those 
 exceptions among our elders. They were the intel- 
 ligent and the strong, and the loving, wherever we 
 could find them. 
 
 I do not speak now of literary mastership ; but of 
 a vital one. The thinkers whom we followed had 
 come to an ethical, often to a political and re- 
 ligious attitude, which was made of affirmation. 
 Even those who were free from political entangle- 
 ments, were deeply and constantly affected by the 
 national life. (How far from the misanthropic, 
 nonchalant artists of 1890!) None were indiffer- 
 ent to collective problems. The most skeptical, 
 apparently, were not the least passionate. All had 
 an intei-pretation of moral life, to propose. And 
 among them we chose, and about them we earnestly 
 discussed witliin ourselves and with each other. 
 
 One man we were reading with more and more 
 attention, among those elders of exception. Charles 
 Peguy had been for 16 years the editor of Les 
 Cahiers de la Quinzaine, a periodical which pub- 
 lished literary, political, documentary works, as 
 separate books. (There appeared for the first time 
 the works of Romain Rolland, including the famous 
 Beethoven, and the long serial of Jean Christophe.) 
 
 Peguy belonged to old French soil. His parents 
 were peasants. He had the strong culture from the
 
 16 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 Ecole Normale, but his faithfulness to the earth of 
 his ancestors was like France's herself. He had 
 clear, penetrating views, was hard to his opponents, 
 and hard to his friends. He described once, with 
 implacable accurateness, the contradictory aspects 
 of Jaures, the great socialist leader, his power and 
 also his weakness. He was absolutely honest, to his 
 party, to his readers, to himself. When we read his 
 books we learnt what civic morals meant. They 
 are usually the most corrupt (because treason and 
 capitulation are there of little consequence) and 
 they ought to be the purest (because they are simple, 
 without obscure nuances, and honesty almost suf- 
 fices.) But Peguy brought something more than 
 honesty. He revealed to us a mystical side of pol- 
 itics. 
 
 "We turn then to the young people ... we can 
 only say to them: Take care. You look upon us 
 as back numbers. This is good, — but be careful. 
 When you speak lightly, when you treat the Repub- 
 lic lightly, so lightly, you run the risk not only of 
 being unjust (which is, perhaps, nothing in your 
 system, at least, so you say, but which in our system 
 is serious, and, according to our ideas, a good deal) . 
 You risk more, in your system even, in your ideas ; 
 you risk being stupid. . . . You forget, you ignore 
 that there has been a republican mysticism (that
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 17 
 
 which we call republican mystics) ; and to forget it, 
 and to ignore it, does not necessarily mean that it has 
 not existed. Men have died for liberty as men have 
 died for faith. These elections of today appear to 
 you a grotesque formality, universally hypocritical, 
 corrupt through and through ; and you have the right 
 to say so. But men have lived, men without num- 
 ber, heroes, martyrs, and I will say saints, and when 
 I say "saints," I know, perhaps, what I am talking 
 about ... an entire people have lived so that the 
 lowest idiot of today should have the right to accom- 
 plish this corrupt formality. This was a terrible, a 
 laborious and formidable childbirth. Nor had this 
 always reached the limit of grotesqueness. The 
 peoples around us, nations, entire races, are in 
 travail with the same painful childbearing; are 
 working and struggling to obtain this ludicrous 
 formality . . . 
 
 "These elections are ludicrous. But the heroism 
 and the sanctity with which, by means of which, are 
 obtained these ludicrous results, temporarily ludi- 
 crous, contain all that is most line and most sacred 
 in the world. 
 
 "Everything begins in mystics and ends in pol- 
 itics. . . . The essential is that in each order of 
 things, in each system, the mystic should not be de- 
 voured by the politic to which it has given birth."
 
 18 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 I thought of Peguy when I read this simple 
 answer in Witter Bynner's New World: "Beauty in 
 politics? — If you put it there." . . . Peguy reacted 
 against our tendency to desert politics. He ac- 
 cepted all the duties of the citizen. 
 
 Charles Peguy, who went as a lieutenant of re- 
 serve with his section of infantry, was killed at the 
 battle of the Marne, in September, 1914. 
 
 The following lines are to be found in his last 
 Cahier, which was entitled "Sur la Philosophic de 
 M. Bergson," and was among the best works he ever 
 gave. One may realize the loss we endured by his 
 death. 
 
 "A great philosophy is not an irreproachable 
 philosophy. It is a fearless philosophy. 
 
 "A great philosophy is not a dictation. The 
 greatest is not that which is faultless. 
 
 "A great philosophy is not the one against which 
 there is nothing to say. It is the one which has 
 said something. 
 
 "And, moreover, it is the one which had some- 
 thing to say, in spite of being unable to say it. 
 
 "It is not the one which has no errors. It is not 
 the one which has no gaps. It is the one which has 
 abundancies. 
 
 "It is not a question of confusing. It is in the
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 19 
 
 schools that it is a question of confusing. It is not 
 even a question of convincing. 
 
 "To confuse the adversary in a matter of philoso- 
 phy . . . what bad breeding! 
 
 "The tme philosopher knows that he is not stand- 
 ing opposing his adversary, but beside his adver- 
 sary and others, facing a reality always greater 
 and more mysterious. 
 
 "And this even the true physician knows. That 
 he is not standing opposing his rival physician, but 
 beside him, facing a nature always more profound 
 and more mysterious. 
 
 "To listen to a philosophical debate, or to partici- 
 pate therein, with the idea that one is going to con- 
 vince or subjugate his adversary, or that one is going 
 to see one of the two adversaries confound the other, 
 is to show that one does not know what one is talking 
 about, to acknowledge to great incapacity, vulgarity 
 and barbarism. It is evidence of a great lack of 
 culture. It is to show that one does not belong to 
 this country." 
 
 His conclusion to the discussions about Berg- 
 sonism was this: 
 
 "It is a prejudice, but it is an absolutely un- 
 eradicable prejudice that demands that an inflexible 
 reason should be more a reason than a flexible one.
 
 20 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 . . . It is the same prejudice that demands that an 
 inflexible scientific method should be more a 
 method, and more scientific, than a flexible scien- 
 tific method. 
 
 "It is evident, on the contrary, that it is the elastic 
 and flexible methods, flexible logic, and flexible 
 morals that are the most severe, as they adhere the 
 most closely to their object. 
 
 "An inflexible logic may permit errors to escape 
 from its recesses. ... An inflexible moral may 
 permit crimes to escape from its recesses, while, on 
 the contrary, a flexible moral will hold, denounce 
 and pursue the sinuosities of those things which 
 seek to escape. Inflexibility is essentially false; 
 flexibility is true. 
 
 "It is flexible morals which exact a heart to keep 
 perpetually ready and pure, and which exercise the 
 most implacable and hard restraints. The only 
 ones which are never absent, which do not pardon. 
 It is elastic and flexible morals, flexible methods, 
 flexible logic, that exercise the most implacable ob- 
 ligations. It is for this reason that the most honest 
 man is not he who enters into apparent rules. It is 
 he who remains in his place, who works, who suff"ers 
 and who says nothing." 
 
 These are the last lines of his that were published. 
 But Peguy was still an elder to us. I shall quote
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 21 
 
 now another writer, who really embodied, for the 
 few years of his life, our best feelings, beliefs, 
 enthusiasms. He was the living soul of us all. 
 Henri Franck died at 23, before the war, leaving 
 an unfinished poem: La Danse devant UArche, and 
 various essays on philosophy and literature. 
 
 Here are the verses where he speaks of his friends 
 and of our group : ^ 
 
 "French boys, fine of face, raised by your mothers, 
 
 Who from babyhood had slow and serious growth 
 
 In your large houses enclosed in leafy gardens. 
 
 Boys religious as I was, from childhood taught 
 
 To assist the priest and help in conducting the mass; 
 
 Older, you left intelligent mother and wise father 
 
 And came to complete in Paris the growth of your spirit. 
 
 You have sense and pleasing manners, politeness and 
 
 warmth ; 
 Latin and geometry you knew, and combining 
 Things respected from childhood and those learned in 
 
 college, 
 Religious boys, much troubled by your studies. 
 At twenty years strangely you try to reconcile 
 Old beliefs with your new uncertainty." 
 
 And this expresses the understanding among the 
 young men who find themselves before the new task 
 of their lives: 
 
 "0 the joy of feeling ourselves in heart among our con- 
 temporaries, 
 And of building up our spirits through each other! 
 1 Translation by Miss V. Hale.
 
 22 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 "Because in the same year we were all conceived 
 There vibrates a secret understanding among us, 
 A thing that is strong to bind our youthful brows 
 As the yoke binds the oxen together to their teams. 
 Like them we press on with united effort, 
 Like them bear on the earth an equal weight. 
 
 "The air in which our laugh rings and our voices sound 
 Is of the same age. It was born with us; 
 Because we had our growth at the same time, together, 
 Each of us understands, and each expresses, all the 
 
 others ; 
 Each of us easily may know from the beginning 
 What this clear-headed old man may not know. 
 
 "We have been watching the new life grow within us, 
 
 And now it is ripe, eager to spend itself. 
 
 It is we, now, who shall take the risk. 
 
 We, who shall hurl the discus. 
 
 And our violin shall lead the dance. 
 
 We are seeking a place where to build our work. 
 
 "The generation which we form together 
 Is winged and massive as a swarm of bees — 
 What branch will hold its humming fruit. 
 And what will be the flavour of our honey?" 
 
 Henri Franck had a clear and intense belief in 
 the genius of France. He said of the French lan- 
 guage: 
 
 "It is like the mobile and expressive face, 
 The obedient army under its intelligent chief, 
 And the royal road where the spirit entire
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 23 
 
 May march forward at ease. 
 
 Like the fiery sword the arch-angel wielded, 
 
 The sword of reason, it reveals and separates. 
 
 Defines and creates limits, points out and circumscribes. 
 
 "It has the ring of laughter, it is the voice of justice, 
 
 The sound of clearness and of certitude. 
 
 The pure expression of the inner self. 
 
 Over the orator it throws a decent dress, 
 
 And gives the hero's voice resounding speech." 
 
 And glorifying the country herself and then the 
 Republic: 
 
 "I greet you, sentinel on the bridge of Europe, 
 
 Live bird in your vines, lark in your field. 
 
 Cock singing at dawn of the centuries on your farm; 
 
 And as a peasant entering the hall 
 
 Out of respect for the masters of the house 
 
 And that he may not soil the finely waxed floor 
 
 Carefully removes his boots and holds them in his hand, 
 
 So in your honour, France, I put aside 
 
 The heavy perturbation of my spirit; 
 
 The gaze with which I look upon you shall be clear. 
 
 My eyes shall look with love, cherished country! 
 
 "0 ancient wisdom built up century after century; 
 courage of the world, heart of the West, 
 Nation inventive, intelligent, Living One — 
 Republic, I hail you by your glorious name. 
 
 "As a young woman leaning on the balcony of the family 
 
 mansion 
 The house adorned with antique portraits and coats of 
 
 arms, and statues along the walks,
 
 24 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 Will not look at the walls of the house 
 
 Nor its arms woven in beautiful tapestries, 
 
 Nor the ancient escutcheons painted upon its wood, 
 
 But with a long look courageous and eager 
 
 Follows the great ships cleaving the water toward new 
 
 lands 
 And the young emigrant with exalted look on his face: 
 O Youth, with elbow braced upon the history of ages 
 You turn your eyes toward the free horizon. 
 
 "And you are the first to build and the first to destroy; 
 That in your generous heart you may feel life always 
 
 warm, 
 Each century you turn your age-cold knowledge to new 
 
 purpose. 
 You put to untried uses your ancient wealth." 
 
 If I quote such long passages it is because I never 
 could find a better and more accurate expression of 
 our spirit than this lyrical one. In a great epoch, 
 the poets are the best speakers of a nation. 
 
 Henri Franck was passionately devoted to philo- 
 sophical study and teaching. But his essential dis- 
 position to abstract thought did not prevent him 
 from hearing 
 
 "Along the open frontier — the stirring 
 
 Of ponderous legions of Teutons hungry for prey." 
 
 And in one of his philosophical chronicles in the 
 review La'Phalange, he wrote these prophetical sen- 
 tences, as he returned from a trip to Alsace, where 
 he met the men, the Alsatians:
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 25 
 
 "Ah, when, after a week, I went up again from 
 Barr and Obernai to Sainte-Odile, under my steps 
 questions arose with the leaves; as I walked with 
 care not to hurt the earth, I felt that I was treading 
 on a great and sorrowful problem. We must go, 
 all of us, every year, several times a year, armed 
 with letters of introduction, to visit Alsace and talk 
 with the Alsatians. You will not teach them much, 
 but you will learn a great deal from them — Barres 
 is right. 
 
 "They will give you a conclusive lesson in energy 
 and manly pride. Though Charles Andler, in a 
 magnificent lecture, did indeed warn us that there is 
 no German culture, I had not grasped the whole 
 meaning of the statement. Now, thanks to the 
 Alsatians, I am in a position to confirm it and to ex- 
 plain it to you. . . . 
 
 "The question is a pressing one. Germany be- 
 comes each day more odious. Europe no longer 
 breathes freely. It was Germany that contrived 
 the vile plot which made Young Turkey its victim. 
 It is sad to think that today Lord Byron would go to 
 the rescue of the Turks, but where is Lord Byron? 
 And we — what are we doing? We must really ap- 
 preciate that the time for delicate intellectual hesita- 
 tions has passed. In every corner of the world the 
 future meets one obstacle: Germany. . . . The
 
 26 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 magnificent struggle between the middle class 
 which has not yet lost its moral strength, and those 
 of the workers who are seeking to find and to pre- 
 pare themselves, is dominated and warped by Ger- 
 man effort. Is this heavy backward force much 
 longer to bar our way? Will it be successful in 
 throwing itself across the path of the creative evo- 
 lution of French freedom?" 
 
 That was written in 1910. 
 
 It may easily be seen that the want of young men 
 was for an employment of their mystical faculties, 
 an answer to their mystical exigencies. It has been 
 called a "renaissance of idealism," which is not 
 quite true. The sign of youth in nations as well as 
 in individuals is the want to give themselves widely 
 to high and limitless aims. These young men did 
 not exactly go back to a former spiritual ideal. 
 But first they worshipped what they knew to be the 
 highest objects of love; and then they wanted to call 
 "Divine" what they loved. Mystics do not mean 
 orthodoxy, for there are mystics resulting from any 
 high form of belief, and they do not exclude each 
 other. A mistake that was made some time ago 
 was to expect from Science, mystics to be created 
 that would replace all others. This could no more 
 be conceived by a generation which had assimilated 
 pragmatism. Now Peguy proposed a form of
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 27 
 
 mystics, and Paul Claudel another, and Wliitman 
 another. We listened to them all. And it can be 
 said indeed that there was no new work of art 
 which was not consciously backed by mystics. 
 
 Yes, it was a rich epoch, a clean, strong, passion- 
 ate one. It was free from prejudice for or against 
 science. But everything was looked at for what it 
 was, and only those false ivitnesses were hated who 
 gave to France a visage which had never been hers, 
 and were responsible for the distorted image which 
 the world had of her. ( Some of them are still alive 
 or enthroned in the Academic.) A sense of respon- 
 sibility developed which was not imposed as a heavy 
 burden, but accepted as a joyful dignity. Every 
 moment of personal, cultural or national life 
 obliged a choice, and it was indifference which was 
 losing ground. Professor James Mark Baldwin, 
 who followed closely that "renaissance" and prob- 
 ably interpreted an aspect of it in his theory of 
 "Pancalism," wrote in 1913:^ 
 
 "Indeed, the signs multiply of a new departure 
 in France, a departure amounting to a renascence 
 of the spiritual life. It shows itself in a new 
 sobriety and firmness in foreign policy, a new de- 
 mand for personal temperance and restraint, a new 
 
 "i- French, and American Ideals (Manchester).
 
 28 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 enthusiasm for moral achievement. In this the true 
 elan of the French character is again revealed. A 
 new stage of the French ideal is in process of 
 formation. . . . Americans join with all the world 
 in acclaiming this renewal of the national life of 
 France in a moral purpose so resolute, so informed 
 with knowledge, so sure of itself." 
 
 When the war broke out, the first spontaneous 
 manifestation which resulted from it was 1' Union 
 Sacree. It was an immediate response to a ques- 
 tion that had to be instantly solved. All solved it 
 in the same sense, because a clear feeling of rela- 
 tive importance of things was instantly imposed 
 upon us. First of all, France had to be saved. 
 And in this struggle, two principles were face to 
 face. On one side, the system, more immediately 
 prosperous, of stiff unification and mechanical co- 
 operation was imposed — an order complete but 
 artificial. On the other side, unification coming 
 by itself, from within, by a natural, normal process 
 of life as a result of the free will of men freely 
 associated, an order which was more rich and flexi- 
 ble. The battle of the Marne decided between 
 those two orders, and was for the civilized world 
 of today what Salamis had been for the Greek 
 world.
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 29 
 
 The French were morally prepared for the worst, 
 and the first retreat did not surprise them. If 
 Paris had had to be besieged or even abandoned, 
 the army's morale would have stood the shock. But 
 that extreme trial was spared us. And then began 
 a great experience of mutual knowledge for the 
 French. Social classes, political parties, were 
 mixed in the trench, and as each one was giving 
 an equal share of blood, none had a right to claim 
 more patriotic authority than the others. These 
 classes and parties learned to meet on the basis of 
 equality before death, which is a rather solid basis 
 on which to appreciate each other. They certainly 
 are decided to oppose each other after the war, 
 for every one finds in the great and complex events 
 reasons to confirm his faith and standards. But 
 they will fight each other more intelligently, hav- 
 ing more respect for what they oppose. No valu- 
 able evolution of thought could be obtained by 
 sanguinary process, except on the subject of war 
 itself and the realization of its horrors. But in 
 the interior of each party an evolution occurred 
 towards more consciousness and dignity. 
 
 As for a better knowledge of foreign minds, what 
 invaluable experience was the presence on our soil 
 of men from most allied countries: Belgians, 
 Serbians, Americans, Englishmen, Russians, Portu-
 
 30 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 guese, Italians! What an opportunity given to our 
 young men to put into practice their abstract inter- 
 est and curiosity for other countries, and to prepare 
 countless forms of co-operation for the work after 
 the war! 
 
 Many of them, though, will work no more. 
 Thousands will play no more a part in the life of 
 the country they loved — and no part in life at all. 
 My friends Alain-Foumier, Baguenier-Desormeaux, 
 Jean Reutlinger, Armand de Montousse — and my 
 countless brothers whose names I do not know — 
 you were the best among us and now you leave a 
 heavy task for us to perform. We shall miss you 
 not with the heart only; we shall miss your energies 
 and advice. At least we must try to imagine what 
 you would require from us, and then do it. 
 
 Not death only did strike the martyred country, 
 but also sufferings of all kinds. The endless trains 
 of wounded, I have them well in mind. Thousands 
 of bleeding bodies I bent over: 
 
 "The crushed head . . . 
 
 The neck of the cavalryman with the bullet through and 
 through, I examine, 
 
 . . . The perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet- 
 wound, 
 
 . . . The one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so 
 sickening, so offensive. . . ." ^ 
 
 1 Whitman.
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 31 
 
 And above all, this has been the infinite 
 martyrdom of women. Women of our time have 
 been through trials which made them the true vic- 
 tims of this war. Think of the little probability of 
 the infantryman coming back, after three years of 
 renewed, perpetual risk. Women faced this with 
 limitless heroism. They had shared the moral 
 preparation of the young men ; they, too, had known 
 those enlightening and exalting discoveries which 
 were ours, and often they approached more closely 
 than we, to our own young standards of life. In- 
 deed they contributed in fixing those standards, and 
 we knew that we were right when they approved of 
 what we did. In the war they played a part equal 
 to that of the men, as nurses, workers in ammuni- 
 tion factories, and in learning hundreds of new oc- 
 cupations. And diey brought up alone, true to our 
 ideals magnified by the greatest of sacrifices, the 
 children of the fighting, and the children of the 
 dead. 
 
 Useless, criminal business was this war. I can't 
 compare it better than to a huge railway catastrophe, 
 due to mischief: an engineer had run mad and be- 
 lieved that all trains had to yield the track to him. 
 Now trains are burning. The more help, the sooner 
 it will be over. It is no more a question of idly
 
 32 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 discussing if railway catastrophes are good or bad. 
 It is a business of stopping the mad engine, and two- 
 thirds of the world are now occupied with that 
 task. 
 
 This experience was worthless for those who had 
 found without it, or would have found, a noble 
 sense to life and to work. It was just enlighten- 
 ing to those who ignored themselves, and had their 
 own value revealed to themselves, through it. To 
 most it was but the opportunity to manifest what they 
 unconsciously were. For some, for very few, it 
 meant a magnificent display of their best qualities 
 and gave a full employment to their means. I 
 think, for instance, of the aviators, who are the 
 very definite product of a generation formed 
 through love of science, sport and self-sacrifice. 
 
 I felt, when I happened to visit them in the field, 
 that I met the very exceptional heroes for whom this 
 war meant (as it did for all fighters in other times) 
 intense individual expression of power, courage and 
 intelligence. For them at least war meant exalted 
 form of life. 
 
 But our largest hope is in another element, more 
 and more numerous, and which does much, thinks 
 more, and speaks little in this moment. Have you 
 seen a drawing by Bernard Naudin, picturing "Le
 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION 33 
 
 Bleuet"? Le Bleuet is the young soldier from the 
 classes of 1914, '15, '16, '17, called during the 
 war. He is now from eighteen to twenty-two. The 
 young man who is now about to enter the fight, after 
 he had had three years of moral preparation through 
 the fight carried on by his elders, is a new kind of 
 man. 
 
 He grew up aware of the near presence of death. 
 He faced in their sternest reality the duties and 
 conflicts of personal life, family life, national life. 
 He and his comrades will be fit to lead us after 
 the war. They must be our leaders. 
 
 The salvation of France will be to let herself be 
 led by her men of twenty, when they come back. 
 They know evidently more than we do about the 
 present time. They have our experience plus their 
 own. They can see our schemes meeting realiza- 
 tion or failure; our dreams become their schemes, 
 and they have dreams in their turn which we can- 
 not guess, and which will come true — as our night- 
 mares did. For it appears that these men have 
 deep and reasonable faith in themselves. 
 
 Last year, in Salonica, Gaston Cherau told me this 
 anecdote: The young recruits from the class of 
 1915 had seen their first battle, and had behaved 
 splendidly. After it, an old officer was congratulat- 
 ing them, and, briskly, although he had tears in his
 
 34 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 eyes, told some of them: " You are wonderful 
 boys, all of you." A young fellow replied: 
 " Oh, Captain, that's nothing. But wait a minute 
 till you see those from the class of '16 — then you'll 
 see something! "
 
 II 
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 
 
 The capital fact of the present evolution. Its prophets. 
 America's work during the first part of the war. Conditions 
 of international leadership. Perils of "know-nothingism." 
 The value of common experience. The value of common 
 purpose. War and Democracy. The pacifists from the 
 trenches. Our "prussianization." Common sense and our 
 aims. 
 
 The boy enlisted. Then he told his father, who 
 asked him what his motives were: 
 
 "Well, this treatment of the Belgians got on 
 my nerves at last." 
 
 These United States. This young country — this 
 old country in the experience of democracy. A 
 great, successful experience, easy but for one dread- 
 ful crisis, when the land was divided and bleeding 
 for five years. And now, meeting for the first time 
 an actual world task. 
 
 I have tried to set aside the thousands of small 
 episodes and observations which I have gathered 
 during my presence in this country, and to isolate 
 the main striking significance of the last event. I 
 see it as follows: 
 
 The nation is of two broad categories, having 
 35
 
 36 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 practically nothing in common but the name of 
 American, and ideals which have never had an op- 
 portunity to appear to be common. First, the fam- 
 ilies who lived in America in the time of the Civil 
 War, then those who have arrived since. The first, 
 mostly of English, Irish, Dutch and French descent. 
 The latter German, Slav, Jewish, Italian, Syrian, 
 etc. The first had colonized and organized the New 
 World, and lived through the crisis which put its 
 very existence in question. The latter came to a 
 New World that was ready and achieved, and played 
 an obscure part in its prosperity. Until now they 
 have had no place in the ruling class, except the 
 Jews who first reached the higher positions. All 
 the life of the recent immigrants has been devoted 
 to personal fortune and safety; they have kept a 
 rather sentimental attachment to the motherland and 
 the traditions of the race. Still, by their very pres- 
 ence on this soil, they shared the latent ideal, which 
 was that of public liberty and personal dignity. 
 They had emigrated to find it and to find a larger 
 chance of prosperity under a sky that was less heavy 
 than the sky of the old empires. 
 
 Now the New Country is agitated by the irresist- 
 ible call of the world. She cannot remain isolated 
 nor indifferent. The world makes too great a noise, 
 and that noise comes nearer and nearer. Things
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 37 
 
 have gone far since the torpedo which struck the 
 Lusitania was heard exploding, on this shore. The 
 New Country decides her ways according to the 
 old principles laid by the first immigrants, but ap- 
 plied to the circumstances of the present day. 
 President Wilson says March 5, 1917: "We are 
 provincials no longer. The tragical events of the 
 tliirty months of vital turmoil through which we 
 have just passed have made us citizens of the 
 world. There can be no turning back. Our own 
 fortunes as a nation are involved, whether we would 
 have it so or not. 
 
 "And yet we are not the less Americans on that 
 account. We shall be the more American if we but 
 remain true to the principles in which we have been 
 bred. They are not the principles of a province or 
 of a single continent. We have known and boasted 
 all along that they were the principles of a liberated 
 mankind. . . . 
 
 ". . . All nations are equally interested in the 
 peace of the world and in the political stability of 
 free peoples, and equally responsible for their 
 maintenance." 
 
 Those historical words meant new duties for all 
 America — the first and the second category. How 
 did the second behave? How far did it endorse the 
 attitude of the adopted country?
 
 38 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 I shall give an instance of it which struck me very 
 strongly: 
 
 In the heart of the great metallurgic district of 
 Pennsylvania, thousands of Slavs live and work, 
 men who emigrated to escape Austrian and Hun- 
 garian oppression. In June, 1917, after the visit 
 to this country of a Serbian colonel, Milan Pribit- 
 chevich, who talked to them of the duty to help in 
 the war of liberation, two thousand enlisted and 
 went at once. Now they are fighting in Salonica. 
 
 I went to Johnstown to see them depart, and it 
 was a spectacle which I shall never forget. They 
 were not even American citizens yet. They had 
 lived here in peace, some in prosperity. They 
 could never have been forced to take arms against 
 the Empire from which they came. But they chose 
 to revolt against it because the spirit of liberty was 
 in them. I saw them receiving two flags from the 
 hands of their priests, an American flag and a 
 Serbian one. They took the oath to conquer or 
 to die, and the two flags were solemnly blessed. 
 Then those simple men, who belong to a strong, 
 pure, peasant race, kissed both flags as a sign of 
 equal allegiance. This was a real scene from the 
 drama of the great international upheaval. 
 
 It had a great significance. Those emigrated 
 people, who are free from any oppression and can
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 39 
 
 hear every opinion, have the right to claim that they 
 represent the free creeds of tlieir countrymen from 
 oppressed lands. Now they speak little, but they 
 volunteer and go, showing that this country is not 
 only a refuge against tyranny, but a place where 
 the energies of liberty are sufficiently abundant to 
 be spread throughout over the world. 
 
 No representative of America was there. (The 
 city of Johnstown has a strong German population; 
 the authorities, who were invited, did not appear.) 
 The daily papers hardly mentioned this departure 
 of two battalions, and probably did not notice the 
 meaning of it. I am convinced that many of you 
 Americans do not know the resource which is in 
 those simple people, who make no advertisement 
 of their feelings, but go and die for "your" prin- 
 ciples. And, with differing souls, their love for 
 the country rests on the same basis as that of the 
 builders of America themselves. 
 
 And when they will have given their blood, the 
 last difference between you, which rested in an un- 
 equal experience, will be swept out, because they 
 will have shared the greatest experience of your 
 civic life. 
 
 I think this is the capital fact of the present evolu- 
 tion, and all the episodes which hold the headlines
 
 40 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 of tlie daily papers are but details in it. This 
 active "melting" process is the triumphant meaning 
 of America, which was announced by its prophets 
 in the past, and which also vibrates in the words 
 of its younger poets. Whitman exclaimed: 
 
 Brain of the New World! what a task is thine! 
 
 To formulate the Modern . . . 
 
 . . . Land tolerating all — accepting all. . . . 
 
 And Witter Bynner, who wrote on the copy of his 
 ^^New World," which he gave to me : , . ."the new 
 world being both France and America," says: 
 
 Here as I come with heaven at my side 
 
 None of the weary words they say 
 
 Remain with me, 
 
 I am borne like a wave of the sea 
 
 Towards world to be . . . 
 
 And, young and bold, 
 
 I am happier than they — 
 
 The timid unbelievers who grow old!" 
 
 What happened for us in relation with the world, 
 happens for the various elements of your country 
 in relation with each other. The mutual acquaint- 
 ance of the various races in the ranks of the national 
 army will work for an even more rapid union. 
 
 In the future, the violation of Belgium and the 
 victory of the Marne will be regarded as events 
 of American as well as European history, since the 
 first determined the conscience of the world against
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 41 
 
 Germany, and the second made it possible for 
 America to interfere in time. Your moral prep- 
 aration was, in my opinion, as rapid as it could be. 
 But many elements among the best educated and in- 
 formed had not waited for an official and general 
 intervention. From the early days of the war 
 American boys were to be found in the ambulance 
 and aviation corps, American women among the 
 nurses and engaged in Relief work. All this pro- 
 ceeded from two virtues which I think are char- 
 acteristic of America — chivalry and right intui- 
 tion. I saw those qualities applied in many war 
 works; I saw them give unbelievable results of 
 efficiency in some instances, like the "Appui Beige," 
 a French work ruled by American methods, or the 
 Vacation War Relief Committee with whom I had 
 the pleasure to co-operate, and who supplies our 
 troops with surgical field material. 
 
 I remember M. Jusserand telling me of the ex- 
 treme delicacy and modesty of many American do- 
 nators, who never wanted their name to appear, and 
 often gave for our wounded more than regard for 
 their own comfort would have allowed them to do. 
 
 Indeed, America seems to be designated for a 
 certain form of world-leadership, which does not 
 mean a world-domination, far from it; but a stand
 
 42 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 that involves an example to be followed by others. 
 Some countries wanted to rule the world when the 
 world did not care for their rule. But the fact is 
 that the world of today is eagerly expecting Amer- 
 ica to play a leading part in its destinies. You do 
 not realize how much an enlightened Russian, 
 Frenchman, Syrian, Chinese, expects from your 
 presence in the family of nations. 
 
 But there are heavy conditions to be fulfilled by 
 a moral leadership like the one which is wanted 
 from both our countries. First of all, "Know-noth- 
 ingism" has to be banished. America will reap the 
 fruits of her clean, unaggressive, honest policy: 
 her prestige everywhere is growing, which means 
 immediate and concrete advantages. But America 
 has to be revealed to herself with all that she con- 
 tains.^ In that respect, there is an amazing con- 
 trast between the abundance and facility of in- 
 formation, and the actual lack of knowledge. 
 
 1 "America is like a vast Sargasso Sea — a prodigious welter 
 of unconscious life, swept by ground-swells of half conscious 
 emotions. All manner of living things are drifting in it, 
 phosphorescent, gaily coloured, gathered into knots and clotted 
 masses, gelatinous, unformed, flimsy, tangled, rising and fall- 
 ing, floating and merging, here an immense distended belly, 
 there a tiny rudimentary brain (the gross devouring the fine) — 
 everywhere an unchecked, uncharted, unorganized vitality like 
 that of the first chaos." (Van Wyck Brooks in America's 
 Coming of Age.) 
 
 Since these lines were written, America has entered into her 
 new process of crystallization.
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 43 
 
 A strange phenomenon of the present time de- 
 serves more attention than it seems to have roused. 
 It is a consequence of the opposition between inter- 
 ventionists and pacifists. The first, who belonged 
 to the nationalist and more conservative part of the 
 country, were pushing America forward and urging 
 her to take part in the world conflict, and so 
 hastened her evolution. The other extreme party, 
 which included the most advanced elements, was 
 striving in order to hold the country back, stopping 
 her on her way to intervention, and practically act- 
 ing as reactionary power. The filial results will 
 probably bring surprises to both parties. 
 
 We regard America as being nearly ready for 
 political leadership, because the international at- 
 titude of mind of the Americans is the right one. 
 They are not embarrassed by old prejudices and 
 methods, and have a tendency to settle things ac- 
 cording to elementary human right, which they 
 never lose sight of. That is why we welcome 
 America in the conference of peace. 
 
 But my hope and faith in America is not con- 
 fined to that. I expect from her, very soon, some 
 great artistic revelations. Her avidity to absorb 
 will soon be followed by a faculty to choose and to 
 reject, and then she will be ready for creation,
 
 44 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 which will not be an isolated exception. Already 
 some splendid isolated works are showing the way. 
 I find one more likeness with the French, in the 
 fact tliat many American men and women are worth 
 more than the purpose they seem to have in life. 
 Are not some disputable forms of success still pur- 
 sued, at the cost of happiness, health and life itself, 
 by men and women of rich resource who kill in 
 themselves all possibility for deep, personal, orig- 
 inal life? It is because we love America so much 
 that such slight disappointments do not leave us 
 indifferent. 
 
 The present crisis is bringing to the people of 
 America a moral experience which can be com- 
 pared with that which came to the people of France, 
 in August, 1914. Of course, the experience of 
 American citizens will never be the same as that of 
 the Europeans. But similarly the English experi- 
 ence in the war is not the French one, which in 
 turn is neither the Belgian, nor the Serbian, nor 
 the Polish. King Albert's situation is not Presi- 
 dent Wilson's; still as a matter of fact, both took 
 the same attitude towards the same challenge. 
 
 The United States took its actual stand by a long 
 considered act which consciously involves large re- 
 sponsibilities. And the whole countiy, understand-
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 45 
 
 ing the gravity of possible consequences, is making 
 rapid acquaintance with that "Union Sacree" which 
 in France was our first great positive experience in 
 the present war. 
 
 There was until now, in spite of our common 
 principles, one tremendous difference between us. 
 The people of France had first to lose their feeling 
 of security and be thrown on the battlefield. Amer- 
 ica had not even been made anxious for her safety. 
 Now her every citizen is anxious, and thinks, and 
 tries to find his way. And that anxiety is in itself 
 an immense experience. 
 
 Now if something great is to be realized after 
 the war, if we are to know, as Mr. Wilson and our 
 successive Premiers have said explicitly, a peace 
 maintained by an organized international will, then 
 the future maintainers of that peace have first to 
 understand each other, and this implies that the 
 terms we use have a similar sense. What under- 
 standing was possible between a European soldier 
 with his three years of fighting in the trenches, with 
 his experiences of danger, of anger, and of medi- 
 tation in the constant face of death — and an Ameri- 
 can citizen from the West? Today, the citizen 
 from the West has made up his mind, has reflected 
 on the government's reasons, and has endorsed the 
 President's action. There was no alliance, there
 
 46 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 was no concerted action between us. But the facts 
 are these: France which was peaceful had to 
 mobilize against certain destructive forces. Amer- 
 ica which is peaceful had to mobilize against the 
 same forces. Thus our effort and your effort to- 
 ward peaceful life had something in common, were 
 it only the common drawback to its success. And 
 so in the struggle to establish a lasting peace, we 
 were already co-operating indirectly. Thus some 
 international terms had passed from Utopia to 
 reality. This may seem to be of little importance. 
 Still it is capital. 
 
 Because peace will come. We must remember 
 that today throughout the world a formidable and 
 resolute will exists, almost unanimous, to guar- 
 antee that peace, in the future, against the intrigues 
 of adventurous politics. That will exists even 
 more firmly in the minds of those who do not ex- 
 press it in speeches, but are fighting for it. 
 
 In 1792 France wanted to bring liberty to the 
 world. The world was not ready to receive it. 
 Only the Americans, the Swiss, and the English, 
 as nations, knew what the word itself meant. Most 
 of the others, as the French sometime earlier, did 
 not see anything more glorious than to belong to a 
 prince. The world really awoke in 1848. In the 
 same way the world of three years ago was not ripe
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 47 
 
 for the general enforcement of peace. But now it 
 is awake, dreadfully indeed, and waits for some- 
 thing that has to come. Will you say it is Utopian, 
 the international understanding which practically 
 all inhabitants of the civilized world call for with 
 all their hearts, and for which so many are dying? 
 
 Well, to obtain this result of understanding, we 
 have to deal with terms of common significance. 
 Until February 3rd the end of the war seemed to 
 announce itself as the way into an obscure, uncer- 
 tain period, full of debates and disagreements, 
 where three groups of Powers would be involved, 
 directly or otherwise: the Allies, the Central Pow- 
 ers, the neutrals. And what was there of common 
 significance for those three groups of similar 
 strength, and entirely dissimilar mentalities, ex- 
 periences, and aspirations? 
 
 Now let us look at the consequence of the Ameri- 
 can intervention. America has broken with a na- 
 tion that refused to respect treaties. It is not a 
 special point of maritime right that matters here; 
 it is a fundamental opposition of doctrine. Amer- 
 ica refuses to admit that a nation, more than an 
 individual, might suppress a law, when that law in- 
 terferes with its desires. An Austrian diplomat 
 said: "A nation has a right to wage a preventive 
 war." He meant the attack on Serbia. Chan-
 
 48 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 cellor Bethmann-Hollweg said : "Necessity knows no 
 law." He meant the attack on Belgium. Amer- 
 ica stands firmly against these doctrines, or rather, 
 this destruction of all doctrines. 
 
 The French soldiers are standing against the 
 same. For our men, with their long civic training, 
 are not so stupid and so blind and so tame as to fight 
 during three years of terrible and patient struggle, 
 without knowing why they do it. It is not for a 
 detail, but for the most decisive principles. And if 
 Americans went to war, it was for similar prin- 
 ciples, and not only to avenge a submarine com- 
 mander's bloody fantasy. 
 
 And now do you see the consequence, young 
 American, my comrade? For the future we shall 
 have the experience, in common with the whole 
 civilized world, of having resisted the German at- 
 tempt, just as we should have resisted any otlier: the 
 ideas which we are fighting exist elsewhere, al- 
 though they have been disappearing little by little. 
 In Germany and Austria alone have they remained 
 permanent ideas of government. 
 
 When peace comes, we shall find ourselves to be 
 one vast group of nations (your President said a 
 family) instead of various groups confronting each 
 other in mistrust and misunderstanding. There 
 will be, as there is already potentially (and this is
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 49 
 
 not a dream), a single ensemble wherein at least 
 one common fundamental idea will have been ex- 
 pressed, and even two. First — the will to preserve 
 a lasting peace, and, therefore, to put into practice 
 the necessary means, which had never been seri- 
 ously considered, because of the lack of manifest 
 faith and will on the part of the great number. 
 Second — the common experience of what threatens 
 peace; that is, the so-called right of the mightier, 
 used as a state doctrine, such as is represented by 
 imperial Germany. 
 
 What has been lacking until now is a definite, 
 clear idea to put forth in common. Here we have 
 two. These are enough to begin with. 
 
 There seems to me no doubt that Germany's eyes 
 will be opened, and that she will follow, because 
 there will be no choice for her. Perhaps she will 
 even publish the biggest books about universal peace 
 and the ways of preserving it. We shall see her 
 coming slowly to understand tlie principles enun- 
 ciated by both President Wilson and the Allies. 
 Indeed, on February 3rd Mr. Wilson spoke not 
 only as the leader of these states, but as a leader of 
 civilization itself. We shall see Germany falling 
 in line, however unwillingly, with the world. And 
 that shall be our revenge for all the evil she has 
 done us.
 
 50 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 So the hideous war which began as a last at- 
 tempt for domination, will end as the first operation 
 of international order and police, thanks to the 
 common understanding wrought in the minds of 
 even the most remote. Those whom long dis- 
 tance separates from the actual conflict are now 
 brought to an experience comparable with that of 
 the mobilized peoples of western Europe, because 
 they have acknowledged similar moral standards, 
 and because information travels fast. And it will 
 be the first time that practically the whole civilized 
 world will have done something in common, with 
 its soul and its best forces. This involves an ad- 
 mirable consequence: that this world will be in 
 active process of understanding before peace comes. 
 Thus peace will find divergent minds already pre- 
 pared to work together. Christianity itself never 
 knew such a wide and mighty gathering under a 
 common purpose. Now the combined forces for 
 peace can work with the prospect of being stronger 
 than any warlike minority that may arise; even 
 those minorities allied together could not impose 
 their will upon us, if us means the rest of the world. 
 I believe that it will remain the great dignity of 
 America that she took her stand in spite of her re- 
 moteness from the major conflict, in spite of her 
 immediate comfort perhaps; a stand worthy of na-
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 51 
 
 tions who will tomorrow build the future, and who 
 fight today in order to render the future possible. 
 
 Among the many confused, contradictory im- 
 pulses and interests which cross each other or com- 
 bine or come into clash in the present time, one 
 essential idea, or at least one word seems to be found 
 everywhere, in every program and as if written in 
 golden letters on every banner. The word Democ- 
 racy seems to sum up the principal purposes which 
 men are now fighting for. "The world has to be 
 made safe for Democracy." This formula has met 
 an almost unanimous assent. Of course the sense 
 given to the word differs, according to parties, to 
 national and, above all, to personal standpoint — as 
 it happened in the French revolution with the word 
 "Liberty." But, notwithstanding those variations, 
 are we entitled to call the victory of Democracy 
 a common purpose for the people involved in the 
 struggle on one side? 
 
 In dealing with such matters as these, I want to 
 say that if my temerity is great, at least my am- 
 bitions are very limited. On those two subjects 
 of war and of Democracy millions of words have 
 been printed, miles of paper covered with tons of 
 ink and even many valuable ideas have been ex-
 
 52 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 pressed. My intention is not to introduce any new 
 proposition or solution of my own to the world 
 crisis, but to sum up tlie very essential elements 
 which constitute the point of view of the average 
 Frenchman of our times. 
 
 It is extremely difficult to find the average man 
 in France. Because we are so different from each 
 other, and rather satisfied to be diff"erent. So that 
 if you succeeded in discovering the average man, 
 he would probably protest with the utmost energy 
 and profess to be in no way an average repre- 
 sentative, but simply an exceptional, independent, 
 original sort of man, and this without any special 
 pride or conceit, just as the next fellow would 
 claim to be. One must not forget that point, for 
 it will help to realize what our conception of 
 Democracy is. 
 
 But I shall try to give, at least, the view of the 
 young men who have had the experience of the war, 
 for they will be the most active and influential fac- 
 tor in the future. 
 
 They went to war — it is very simple — because 
 their country was invaded, in spite of all efforts to 
 prevent it. They went to defend France. But 
 what does France mean? I am not quite sure that 
 France means only a country among many others^ 
 — a flag, a language and a surface of land; al-
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 53 
 
 though these things seem to many, worth fighting 
 for. Will the reader agree if I say that France 
 means perhaps, among other things, the land of free 
 invention, discussion and experiment for social 
 progress? — a living laboratory, where every new 
 principle was tried (at our own expense) before 
 being spread over the world? 
 
 Perhaps they did not go to war because of that? 
 But still they fought because we loved France, and 
 they loved France because she meant that. 
 
 I have explained how France, as a nation, had 
 no aggressive plan at all. How we did not ex- 
 pect readjustment of the injustice committed in '71 
 through a war, but through some other way.^ That 
 war came upon us as a consequence of the world's 
 indifference about some essential problems. Now, 
 what is the present feeling of the Frenchman who 
 has "seen it through"? I dare say that there is 
 one idea that dominates all others. And it domi- 
 nates them from such a height that one could say 
 
 1 "Remember that for over forty years, we kept in our hearts 
 that open wound: Alsace-Lorraine; and we did not make war 
 — we suffered in silence. Our brothers were victims of the 
 most hideous system of police oppression that was ever in- 
 flicted upon a free people. We knew it, and stood it because 
 we wanted peace. It was not enough; since the beginning of 
 the Twentieth Century we had to suffer German provocations 
 in Morocco and other places. We suffered them because we 
 wanted peace." (Speech of High Commissioner Andr^ Tardien 
 before the Alliance Fran^aise of New York, Oct. 11, 1917.)
 
 54 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 it is not the principal idea of our men, but the only 
 one : This war has to be the last one. 
 
 Everybody is awake to that. And if you ask 
 not even the cultivated man, but any of our "bon- 
 hommes," in any trench in any region of the front, 
 he will tell you sternly, simply: '"We do this, and 
 we remain here, and we shall remain to the end, so 
 that our children wont have to do it again." 
 
 No, indeed, you do not know how much we do 
 hate war. . . . 
 
 We have been living for years in all the generous 
 opinions which many discover today. And we do 
 not abjure our faith in a better world — since we 
 fight for it. To all our theoretical and reasonable 
 hatred against war, we now add the hatred which 
 comes through the experience of it. Why should 
 a catastrophe, for which we are not responsible — 
 which came by the crimes of this German ruling 
 military class which thinks little — change ideas that 
 we know to be true, after we had given them so 
 much thought? Only there was too generous illu- 
 sion in believing that other people had then reached 
 our level. 
 
 For us Napoleon's failure was a sufficient dem- 
 onstration. All our liberal thought, through the 
 19th century, is founded upon the conviction of 
 that failure. You can find it in the writings of
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 55 
 
 all those who embody the popular French spirit, — 
 of course mixed with a great sentimental recollec- 
 tion of our glories and splendors. But the Ger- 
 mans derived from Napoleon's adventure only 
 limitless admiration for might and conquest. They 
 kept anachronistic ideals which were in vogue at 
 the time of Louis XIV. Historically they belonged 
 to 250 years back. 
 
 Our men know that victory will come if they 
 wait long enough, and kill and are killed until 
 the enemy understands. Germany started with 
 victories; but she has to meet her failure. Mili- 
 tarism has to meet its failure, a failure which will 
 prove the vanity of domination. Our men who 
 are near to the facts and have nothing to intoxicate 
 them, grimly do their grim duty, and are united 
 in their fighting pacifism. For the trenches are 
 peopled with pacifists, and they would resent bit- 
 terly any one's saying that they like war, since 
 they make it; or that they make it through blind- 
 ness and credulity. 
 
 Three days before the war broke out some of us 
 had doubts about the decisions of socialists and syn- 
 dicalists. These men would never, never have 
 fallen in line with conquering armies. But when 
 they saw that France did all that was possible to 
 prevent war, that our soldiers had been withdrawn
 
 56 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 six miles from the border in order to avoid any 
 possible incident, and that it was really a war of 
 right against might, then they threw all their might 
 — as did America — on the right side. It is ex- 
 tremely instructive to read the articles written by 
 Herve, the anti-militarist leader, who led a daily 
 patriotic fight in his paper, Le Guerre Sociale, later 
 La Victoire, and who was among the first to wel- 
 come V Union Sacree. He saw clearly that, in or- 
 der to save peace, the unchaining of war had not to 
 be left successful and unchastened. He did not 
 the less maintain his democratic standards, attack- 
 ing the wrong use of censorship, defending free dis- 
 cussion. But he joined the unanimous fight for the 
 end of wars and the defeat of dangerous ambitions. 
 
 How is tliis result to happen? We cannot yet 
 outline the exact details, but we all believe it will 
 happen through a certain common interpretation of 
 democracy ; and that is why we believe in democracy 
 not as a dream, but as a mighty reality, whose first 
 eff"ect will be to prevent the return of world calami- 
 ties like this. 
 
 I say: a common interpretation of democracy. 
 And indeed if something like a league of nations, 
 a common work for common purpose, has to be 
 brought about, it can be only by a common inter- 
 pretation of the term which we are now using as a
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 57 
 
 watchword. That term, with all the various mo- 
 tives that it involves, has to be carefully defined, 
 again and again, in all the allied countries. The 
 more we can express in common now the easier the 
 task will be at the end of the war, the further we 
 will be able to carry our first common results. 
 
 Now let me tell, under my own responsibility, 
 what I mean by democracy, I being a man at least 
 independent from political parties, and having ob- 
 served a little, in various countries of our Western 
 World and of the Near East during this crisis. 
 
 Democracy is a name for a common basis; it is 
 the ground on which every personal, independent, 
 original life can be erected. It is not an end by 
 itself, as the German conception of the State or 
 the Roman conception of the Empire. It is a be- 
 ginning. It is not a ceiling. It is a floor; the 
 main floor, for all human undertaking, to be built 
 upon. It is not a limitation to individuality, it is a 
 protection for it. 
 
 And if I may express my full thought: I, as a 
 Frenchman and as a writer, if I stand for Democ- 
 racy it is because it off^ers the safest and most ac- 
 ceptable and loyal basis for individualism. By 
 individualism I don't mean egoism and selfish aims. 
 The highest aim for individual life is self-sacrifice. 
 But it has to be free sacrifice. Sacrifice to what
 
 58 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 you choose and love and want to serve. Not to a 
 mechanical, artificial State which has been im- 
 posed upon you, and where everything is provided 
 for, except your own possibility of a choice, or 
 right to a choice. 
 
 It has been objected that in order to fight we had 
 to prussianize ourselves. Yes, of course the bellig- 
 erents get prussianized. . . . And what I welcome 
 there is that they will have one more reason to hate 
 war. But please, do not believe that after centu- 
 ries of ardent struggle for more liberty a sudden 
 external cause might destroy that aspiration in us. 
 The spirit of liberty has deeper roots, or it would 
 not be worth speaking of! France gives testimony 
 that she loves liberty more than she ever did, for 
 any useless restriction to her liberties provokes 
 violent and ever-ready resistance. 
 
 Our hearts have not so easily lost their robust 
 love for freedom. And we had rather get ap- 
 parently prussianized for a time, and disgusted 
 with it, than get prussianized forever, and the world 
 with us, by permitting the Prussian victory. 
 
 That would mean intense, deep, definitive ger- 
 manization of everything, and of yourselves, by the 
 irresistible prestige of success. Through educa- 
 tion, imitation, and through sheer necessity, German 
 methods of competition would rule the world, each
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 59 
 
 German would become a missionary of the com- 
 pulsory Doctrine. Individual freedom would be 
 put 100 years back. If only France had proved 
 weaker, or America more indifferent, that fate 
 would have been ours, and yours. That is why our 
 soldiers are really dying for Democracy when they 
 resist German world-domination. 
 
 I hope that I am as far as possible from being 
 paradoxical. Democracy is a matter of common 
 sense, as much as art and private life are matters 
 of personal sense. Things have to be made clear, 
 and I suppose they are, in the mind of a great 
 number, and of most of the fighting men, and they 
 only need to be formulated, as they scarcely begin 
 to be. 
 
 On the origin of this war, that it is a war of 
 conquest and oppression, I suppose we agree. A 
 principle was violated when Austria, already de- 
 taining Serbian provinces, attacked the little king- 
 dom. And that principle is not a recent invention, 
 although it appears to be still too new for the rulers 
 of the Central Powers. It has been enunciated very 
 clearly by Turgot when he said about America's 
 right to independence: "It is a strange thing that 
 it be not yet a commonplace truth to say that no 
 nation can ever have the right to govern another 
 nation; that such a government has no other forma-
 
 60 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 tion than force, which is also the foundation of 
 brigandage and tyranny. . . ." 
 
 This is today a commonplace for us. It is not 
 yet so for the Germans. The impulse which led 
 you into this war is the same which made us go to 
 your rescue, and made Franklin say of us: "This 
 nation is fond of glory, particularly that of protect- 
 ing the oppressed." 
 
 Our common purpose has been splendidly de- 
 fined by the President of these States. His address 
 to the Senate on January 22, 1917, extending the 
 Monroe doctrine to the world, already said: 
 "There is no entangling alliance in a concert of 
 power. When all unite to act in the same sense 
 and with the same purpose, all act in the common 
 interest and are free to live their own lives under a 
 common protection." On March 6th, he empha- 
 sized the new situation of America. In his ad- 
 dress of April 3, he pronounced the famous words: 
 
 "We are at the beginning of an age in which it 
 will be insisted that the same standards of conduct 
 and of responsibility for wrong done shall be ob- 
 served among nations and their governments that 
 are observed among the individual citizens of civ- 
 ilized states. . . . 
 
 . . . "The world must be made safe for democ- 
 racy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested
 
 ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 61 
 
 foundations of political liberty. We have no 
 selfish ends to serve. . . .We are but one of the 
 champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be 
 satisfied when those rights have been made as se- 
 cure as the faith and the freedom of nations can 
 make them. . . . 
 
 . . . "We shall fight for the things which we 
 have always carried nearest our hearts — for democ- 
 racy, for the right of those who submit to authority 
 to have a voice in their own governments, for the 
 rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal 
 dominion of rights by such a concert of free peoples 
 as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and 
 make the world itself at last free." 
 
 And the sense of our actual, of our Second Alli- 
 ance, has been well defined by M. Jusserand in his 
 short speech on May 3d in the House of Representa- 
 tives of the United States, when he said: 
 
 "What you do now is to come to Europe to take 
 part in the fight for liberty, a fight in which you 
 expect no recompense, no advantage, except that 
 very great advantage, that in the same way that we 
 helped to secure liberty — human liberty, individual 
 liberty, national liberty — on this continent, you will 
 fight to see that liberty be preserved in the broad 
 family of nations. 
 
 "Thanks to you, we shall see the calamities of
 
 62 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 this struggle shortened, and a new spirit of liberty 
 grow greater and stronger, pervade all countries 
 and indeed fill the world." 
 
 Since then I read in the papers that when General 
 Pershing landed at Boulogne, General Dumas, who 
 is not a diplomat nor a theorician, but the com- 
 mander of our Northern region, said to him : 
 
 "Your coming opens a new era in the history of 
 the world. The United States of America is now 
 taking its part with the United States of Europe. 
 Together they are about to found the United States 
 of the World, which will definitely and finally end 
 the war and give a peace which will be enduring and 
 fruitful for humanity." 
 
 This expresses, I think, the belief of our average 
 Frenchman. And why should that hope prove to 
 be vain? It is reasonable, on the contrary, since 
 it expresses the will of the overwhelming majority, 
 in a matter where the majority will have to decide. 
 
 And if the result is attained once for all, then 
 the huge, untold sacrifice will not have been made 
 in vain.
 
 Ill 
 
 PROMISES OF CONCRETE CO-OPERATION 
 
 New conditions of work in Europe, nearer to the American 
 conditions, because of the scarcity of men and the necessity of 
 rapid reconstruction. American methods to be brought. The 
 new spirit of economic activity in France. A writer on French 
 labor. An instance of common task: co-operation in the coun- 
 tries which are economically backward, but jealous of national 
 independence, and will welcome the Franco-American enter- 
 prises. 
 
 First of all we must squarely face the facts. At 
 the finish of the war France is going to find herself 
 placed in a new and complex economic situation, 
 as will also be the case with those nations bound to 
 her by definite ties. Practicable suggestions for 
 meeting this coming situation can be supplied only 
 by men able to see and point out with equal frank- 
 ness both its most encouraging and its most alarm- 
 ing aspects. Nothing will be accomplished by 
 those who are too easily satisfied by cut-and-dried 
 formulae, who allow themselves to be hypnotized by 
 fixed optimistic or pessimistic theories. The fu- 
 ture is neither easy nor desperate. Only, more 
 
 63
 
 64 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 than at any previous period, the future will depend 
 upon ourselves. 
 
 The situation as it exists today contains the germ 
 of a brilliant tomorrow; it holds also the seeds of 
 ruin. It contains possibilities that make one's heart 
 leap as before the dawn of certain victory. But 
 before us, too, may lie the abyss. Still, there is a 
 bridge by which we may cross it. 
 
 How shall we set to work — noWy we and our 
 friends? For from the day that peace is declared, 
 all those energies that are now diverted to the work 
 of death and destruction will be clamouring to take 
 up life's work in full measure, without losing a 
 moment. We shall merit small thanks from those 
 who are fighting if we have made ready nothing 
 against their return save shouts of joy. It is 
 their right to expect more than that of our fore- 
 sight. 
 
 Never before has man been faced with a future 
 so pregnant with possibilities. Now, possibilities 
 entail responsibilities. And what is first and fore- 
 most plain and inescapable before our eyes is the 
 great responsibility that will rest upon France and 
 her true friends. It is no new responsibility. We 
 recognized and assumed it long ago, at whatever 
 cost to us. It will continue. Who wants to share 
 it with us?
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 65 
 
 Our prestige has been restored. Frenchmen of 
 today will have a far easier task than those of 
 before the war, whose mission was to carry on 
 France's work somehow or other, throughout a 
 world rendered indifferent and sceptical by our 
 defeats of 1870. They succeeded, at that; but 
 they were few. Those of tomorrow will be legion. 
 Like the sturdy workers that they are, resourceful 
 lads, keen for their jobs, they will go forth to the 
 four comers of the earth, after playing their part — 
 and what a part! — in freeing the world through 
 force of arms, to sow the good seed of their labours. 
 And reaping the harvest to follow, France will arise, 
 rich. 
 
 For this too we must say, frankly and simply: 
 "France must be rich." Therein lies the remedy 
 for all her dangers and her ills — infant mortality, 
 tuberculosis, and kindred scourges. Our valiant 
 little family groups, endowed with all the virtues 
 though they be, are frequently crushed beneath ma- 
 terial difficulties, which, being excessive and over- 
 whelming, go not at all to develop character. 
 
 Similarly, it is for lack of money to buy better 
 milk, for lack of money to instal bathrooms, to 
 live more out of doors, to buy sports, technical edu- 
 cation, recreation — for all these things are to be 
 had for money — it is for lack of this money that too
 
 66 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 many of our children die, too many of our gifted 
 young people have to stop midway in their educa- 
 tion, too many of our families go downhill, too 
 many of our intellectual and moral resources wither 
 away before they have bloomed. We must tell 
 things as they are. Pierre Hamp writes: "We 
 are face to face with this moral necessity: France 
 must be rich." 
 
 Now the world has everything to gain by seeing 
 to it that the fruit in France's garden does not dry 
 up, and the world is well aware of it. France is no 
 greedy power, undertaking to dominate through 
 numbers, through intrusion and invasion, and 
 against whom the world must ever be on its guard. 
 France is a well-spring of creative power, a land 
 of spiritual, scientific, and social experiments and 
 experiences. All mankind suffers a little by her 
 distress, and profits by her prosperity. Let her 
 emerge rich from the great effort she is about to put 
 forth, and those who go to her will find her happier. 
 Those who have been wont to look to her for in- 
 spiration will find an .even more abundant treasure 
 within her gates. Those who trade with her will 
 have a chance both to give and receive more. 
 
 What are the obstacles in the way of this pros- 
 perity? Our small population? Certainly not.
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 67 
 
 Inferior numbers are a menace in case of war — we 
 know that only too well! But on the other hand 
 the nation overdensely populated is the one that 
 finds itself handicapped in the attempt to assign 
 congenial work to all its citizens. 
 
 No, the obstacles can be reduced to two funda- 
 mental ones: First, the world's imperfect informa- 
 tion about us and our ways, partly through our own 
 fault; second, some mistaken and prejudiced indi- 
 vidual viewpoints that especially characterized our 
 fellow-countrymen of the past half-century. It is 
 to overcome the first of these handicaps that The 
 New France magazine has undertaken its task, a 
 task long awaited and long called-for.^ I wish here 
 to say a few additional words as to the other 
 obstacle to our expansion. 
 
 Mistaken viewpoints on the part of individuals, 
 I said. Indeed, henceforth it is vitally important 
 that every one of us assume his responsibilities to 
 the full, and rely as little as possible upon the State 
 and public organizations. We are, as is also the 
 
 1 These lines were written for the magazine, New France, 
 and published in its first issue, August, 1917. The purpose of 
 the magazine is to prepare for the future by giving expression 
 to Franco- American ideas upon commercial developments and 
 to promote the spirit of practical co-operation between the 
 two countries. The editors are Denys Amiel, Swinburne Hale 
 and Deems Taylor, and its address is 165 Broadway, New 
 York.
 
 68 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 United States, an individualist nation. Let us be 
 so, frankly and utterly. Above all, let us pro- 
 mote personal intercourse, the relations of man 
 to man — particularly among the younger men, 
 who will be especially unfettered in their future 
 activities. 
 
 Let me repeat: what will save us is an intensive 
 development of a personal sense of responsibility. 
 Man must consent to being judged, not according to 
 what he is or what he can do, but by what he has 
 actually done, what values he is actually creating. 
 This method is unjust, possibly; but the world has 
 no time to learn others. Now the French have 
 always kept their good qualities below the surface, 
 in the form, rather, of potentialities. Travelling 
 through Germany in 1913, I saw clearly that the 
 prosperity of that empire was due, not so much to 
 its organization — and still less to any exceptional 
 qualities of the German — as to a patient and pains- 
 taking development of every resource. 
 
 We French have chosen rather to keep our re- 
 sources locked up, to hold them in reserve, like the 
 hidden treasure that economists call "unproductive 
 wealth." Among prosperous peoples, the secret of 
 success lies not in such and such a particular qual- 
 ity, to be found nowhere else; it lies in mobilizing 
 all their capabilities. And so reforms must be
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 69 
 
 accomplished, not through the State, nor by means 
 of treaties, but through the medium of every indi- 
 vidual intelligence, every will. 
 
 Understand me clearly: I do not set up material 
 success as the only goal of French activities ; but, if 
 one be an intelligent Frenchman, engaged in busi- 
 ness, a wide ambition is his first duty. 
 
 Now, unless we entirely misunderstand the ten- 
 dencies of our younger men, that is on the whole 
 just the direction in which the rising generation is 
 tending. Ignorance of other countries, which so 
 held back our predecessors, had already begun to 
 disappear during the past ten years, thanks to nu- 
 merous outside influences, to an exchange of views 
 that was continuously developing — an intellectual 
 exchange with England, America, and Russia. 
 This intermingling has been hastened during the 
 course of the war by the presence of so many for- 
 eign armies upon our soil, and by the countless 
 personal relations that necessarily resulted. Of 
 course, you will always find youths who are deter- 
 mined not to learn anything, but there will be fewer 
 and fewer of them in the future, and they will be 
 less and less proud of their ignorance. On the 
 whole, it would seem that, as far as ignorance of 
 the outside world is concerned, France is by no
 
 70 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 means the least informed. But we must not forget 
 that the best is expected from us. 
 
 There is one essential element of the French char- 
 acter, much more inherent in us than ignorance of 
 other peoples, which, it seems to me, explains the 
 cause of certain of our failings and at the same time 
 offers us our best hope for co-operation between the 
 young men of America and France. That is, our 
 tendency to criticise — a certain intellectual, critical, 
 negative tendency, which too easily turns into mock- 
 ery. It is the faculty to which the best of us owe 
 their sense of proportion and the clear thinking for 
 which they are noted. Now, the American is gifted 
 with precisely the opposite faculty — a positive, en- 
 terprising tendency to go after immediate results. 
 He is embarrassed by very few hesitations, since up 
 to the present the obstacles before him in his own 
 country, which is always a fruitful field for new 
 enterprises, have been much less serious than in 
 ours. 
 
 Today, however, conditions in the two countries 
 are growing more and more alike. America is no 
 longer a limitless field open to virgin energy, while 
 old Europe is becoming committed to a policy of 
 hasty reconstruction and wide enterprise. Thus 
 our differences are being levelled; and thus may
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 71 
 
 each of us profit more and more by the experience 
 and methods of the other. 
 
 And so a double obligation rests upon us: for 
 America, that of reconciling its methods with new 
 conditions; for France, that of adopting new ways 
 of putting to work the vast treasure of past experi- 
 ence, knowledge, and resourcefulness that the ages 
 have bequeathed to our race. If both of us will 
 resolve to combine this inherited craft skill and 
 science of life witli your audacity, your passion for 
 visible and immediate results, little success will re- 
 main beyond our reach. 
 
 After all, our activities rest upon a common base, 
 upon a feeling which tends to bring us together and 
 through which we seem, to me, to be blood-brothers 
 among the peoples of tlie world. That feeling is 
 the love of work for its own sake, love of the task 
 that we have freely chosen. Our devotion to this 
 work is limitless, provided always that our right to 
 a free choice be respected. Now it is just this right 
 of free choice that characterizes the "kind of world" 
 in which we want to live, as opposed to the super- 
 disciplined "State" world in which our enemies 
 want to make us live — a kind of world that suits 
 them, maybe, but that inspires us with little but 
 horror.
 
 72 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 We believe, Americans and French alike (and 
 here I speak above all in the name of the younger 
 generation), in the free choice of a lifework. We 
 believe that into this chosen calling one can put the 
 best of himself, serving whole-heartedly because he 
 knows that there exists no better or more fruitful 
 field for the forces at his disposal. We believe that 
 once our efficiency is brought to its highest through 
 this faith in our work, we have nothing to fear from 
 the competition of any one. We believe that a 
 calling freely chosen is like a wife chosen from 
 among all women : that, like her, it will bear us fine 
 children. 
 
 What an ugly, vulgar, stupid idea it is, to con- 
 ceive of the whole of human activity as a pitched 
 battle where the victory of one necessarily entails 
 the ruin of others. It is a wom-out and thick-witted 
 theory, worthy only of jealous and greedy peoples. 
 France and America have never admitted its truth, 
 knowing full well that the world profited by every 
 step they made forward. They have always felt 
 that, in reality, nations should be set, not one 
 against the other, but side by side, so as to face 
 together the increasingly complex problems of life. 
 (Thus did Peguy describe the philosophers, and 
 point out the true significance of their competitions
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 73 
 
 and quarrels.) It is thus that we conceive the 
 energies of the world drawn up to weather the fear- 
 ful crisis that has arrayed them together against a 
 common danger. If the world, co-operating to 
 assure the necessary defeat of Germany's lust for 
 conquest, has been able to unite upon this negative 
 program, what is to prevent it from organizing 
 tomorrow upon a positive, lasting basis? Why can 
 it not unite and found itself upon the rock of the 
 most enduring sentiment that is rooted in the heart 
 of man : the love of one^s own handiwork? 
 
 It is the young men of America and France who 
 shall offer us not one, but millions of examples of 
 the goal that may be attained, the results that may 
 be realized through a voluntary alliance like ours, 
 when sprung into full life. 
 
 Love for work — Do you realize how deeply 
 that love is rooted in the Frenchman's heart? 
 
 A writer, Pierre Hamp, has given strong, vivid, 
 accurate descriptions of die labourious life of 
 France. He makes us discover the molecular proc- 
 ess of the trades and industries, a process which is 
 not much known. He himself, like Jack London, 
 has had a long direct experience of the things he de- 
 scribes, before he became an Inspector of Labour. 
 His former work includes several books: Le Rail
 
 74 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 (he was then a railway man), Marie Fraiche (he 
 had been a sailor too) , Vin de Champagne (he knew 
 the details of its whole fabrication) . But I want to 
 present only his three little, dense booklets, pub- 
 lished during the war. Perhaps they are the most 
 valuable contribution to knowledge of the actual 
 conditions among the civil working class during 
 the crisis. You will find there much which will 
 surprise you. . . . 
 
 The first of these books, Le Travail Invincible, is 
 a picture of the conditions of work in Northern 
 France. 
 
 "Flanders had seen the passing of the great Bel- 
 gian migration, pushed on by the German army — 
 flax-pickers of the Courtrai region, still carrying 
 their blue wallets, straggling crowds of women 
 dragging along tired children. In their wake, the 
 Flemings of France were leaving also, fleeing their 
 villages wrecked by German shells. The fugitives 
 filled the railroad trains to overflowing, crammed, 
 standing, into coal cars. Across Flanders, from 
 La Bassee to the Yser, was one great battle. The 
 Germans fell back, freeing Hazebrouck, Bailleul, 
 and Armentieres. But their trenches stretched be- 
 fore this treasure house : Lille, Roubaix, and Tour- 
 coing. 
 
 "In all this upheaval and destruction what be-
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 75 
 
 came of industry? Factories all over the region 
 had been damaged by artillery fire. Thousands of 
 skilled workmen had been driven into exile — an 
 exile often deadlier, through overcrowding, starva- 
 tion, and cold, than the bombardment suffered by 
 those who stayed behind. But no sooner were the 
 Germans gone than the people began to come back 
 and resume work. The industrial 'front' kept 
 pace with the firing line. This movement will be 
 a magnificent one to follow in some future system- 
 atized history of labour during the war. In the 
 valley of the Lys, the weaving mills stopped work 
 on the 6th of October, halted by the bombardment. 
 On October 15th tlie Germans were repulsed; by 
 the 25th, the cloth-looms were whirring and clash- 
 ing again in the mills. Whenever their noise 
 stopped, at lunch-hour and at night, one could hear 
 the musketry fire in the trenches. 
 
 "When the German army bombards an open 
 town, a town whose streets end in the furrows of the 
 fields, it claims to be accomplishing the legitimate 
 military objects of striking demoralization and ter- 
 ror into the civilian population. This is so, at the 
 first bombardment. Those who are terrified flee. 
 By the time the second bombardment takes place 
 the town has taken its precautions and has com- 
 fortably fitted up its cellars. By the tenth bom-
 
 76 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 bardment it is a town inured to war. The persist- 
 ence of the German artilleryman has created a new 
 virtue; under habitual fire the civilian population 
 displays the firmness of veteran troops. 
 
 "The cellars are used for sleeping, the best fitted 
 having a fame of their own. Some of them are 
 comfortably furnished, with cloth hangings on the 
 walls. The cellar windows are blocked with sand 
 bags or bulwarks, each of the latter consisting of 
 two timbers with the crack between them stuffed 
 with rubbish. These cave fortifications encroach 
 upon the sidewalks all along the streets. 
 
 "The night bombardment is the less dangerous. 
 By day, blood is more quickly shed when the town is 
 caught unawares. Summer is the season of street 
 games for the little ones, and the first shell of the 
 morning may fall near three children who are 
 quietly playing together before their house. Their 
 mothers had said 'Don't go far!' and they have 
 been very obedient; but they will never return to 
 their mothers' knees. 
 
 "The town that no longer knows fear feels indig- 
 nation. The tiny corpse of a child instils a horror 
 of Germany within the breasts of those who follow 
 it to the grave. No more may her citizens come 
 here to trade or to supply machinery."
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 77 
 
 And in the fields the peasant shows the same 
 faithfulness to the task: 
 
 "English and German shells pass over the tilled 
 fields, and tlie husbandman can hear the rifle fire 
 in the trenches. Ever since November it has been 
 coming from exactly the same places. Now, how- 
 ever, it seems as though the subterranean battle had 
 moved further off; the noise is muffled. As the 
 ears of grain grow, the sound of rifle shots is corre- 
 spondingly absorbed by the thickness of the ver- 
 dure. 
 
 "This labourer is unconquerable. The tilling of 
 the eardi imposes an obligation which nothing can 
 remove, not even the risk of death. For the man of 
 the fields, war is only a passing storm. He bows 
 before it, and continues his task, big with eternity." 
 
 Pierre Hamp adds: "There is a humble great- 
 ness about these civilians who hold so doggedly to 
 their everyday jobs, these factory women who brave 
 shells to go to work. Next to the soldier who de- 
 fends the soil, the factoiy girl who sticks to her 
 work is the one who makes France immortal. . . . 
 The moral value of work increases in war-time, 
 when the idleness of non-combatants might easily 
 injure the morale of the whole race, and might 
 lower the earning capacity of the labouring classes
 
 78 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 through loss of skill. These working girls who, as 
 they put it, don't want to get out of practice, and go 
 on at their task, are saving the basic power of the 
 country — a thing that must never perish. War is 
 transitory. Labour is eternal." 
 
 And he concludes: "Man's purest grandeur 
 resides in plying well his trade. It is not enthusi- 
 asm tliat he needs for this, but professional con- 
 science." 
 
 I gave long quotations, because I find this one 
 of the most valuable war accounts that I know. 
 
 The second booklet is perhaps the richest in docu- 
 mentation on the new conditions of work, much 
 nearer to American conditions because of the 
 scarcity of men. (That is why, after the war, we 
 shall have so much to learn from your methods.) 
 Already Hamp is able to foresee the reach of pos- 
 sible application of these methods. 
 
 "The American method is above all applicable 
 to industries turning out large quantities of the 
 same pattern of objects — automobiles, typewriters, 
 or shells — and where the total amount of work in- 
 volved in making a product that is always unvary- 
 ing can be subdivided into separate operations. 
 
 "It would be fantastic to attempt to apply the 
 American method unaltered to the French nation. 
 It must be gallicized and made over to suit our
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 79 
 
 labouring-class mental processes. Experiment 
 alone will show where it can be welded to our sys- 
 tem and where there are gaps to bridge. It would 
 break down everything to apply a concept based 
 and calculated solely upon new forces and ideas 
 to a society permeated with old forces and tra- 
 ditions." 
 
 So there will be an adjustment, and it will require 
 much attention and mutual understanding. Hamp 
 then treats tlie difficult matter of emigration, 
 which, too, demands unprejudiced minds in order 
 to be solved according to the actual require- 
 ments of a country. Then he reveals what the 
 work of the women has been, during the war, 
 and what tremendous step has been made in that 
 respect. "Woman has not suddenly become 
 courageous with the war. She merely continues to 
 be so. Having been already engaged in a great 
 variety of occupations, she had some preliminary 
 training when she turned to metallurgy for war pur- 
 poses." In the shell factories hundreds of thou- 
 sands of them are now working. Hamp notices that 
 even there they remain women, and this is together 
 charming and melancholic. 
 
 "They bind their heads with a piece of linen to 
 protect their hair from the dust of glowing iron, 
 incidentally leaving a curl or two to wander — for
 
 80 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 in all her tasks, hard as they may be, nothing will 
 take away from woman her desire to be attractive. 
 The instinct for beauty is unconquerable in her. 
 Even here, where woman is identified with man in 
 her work, and where the social necessities have 
 tended to deprive her of her sex, she preserves the 
 remnants of her charm, and keeps on smiling to 
 save a world that is destroying itself. 
 
 "No workshop, however dusty, hot or smelly, has 
 ever conquered the desire of woman to remain a 
 woman. Exhausted, overheated, and pale, she still 
 smiles. She accomplishes this double and terrible 
 task — to work as much as a man and at the same 
 time preserve the softness of the world and per- 
 petuate the race. 
 
 "It was formerly thought that woman's care could 
 not be trusted when very exact measurements had 
 to be made, but the eyes of an embroiderer are 
 sharper than those of a man, and machines for mak- 
 ing light artillery presented few difficulties to her. 
 The adjustment and testing of a shell fuse require 
 careful attention; no defects are tolerated. The 
 adjuster has to discover errors that the workmen 
 have overlooked. This delicate work is just the 
 reverse of the heavy forging, as the working woman 
 uses only her eyes and the tips of her fingers. 
 Long tables are covered with copper pieces ar-
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 81 
 
 ranged in perfect order. The women must make 
 sure that every- piece is in perfect condition and 
 exact in calibre, by means of delicate steel gauges, 
 for the slightest defect may prevent the shell from 
 exploding or make it explode in the guns. No mag- 
 nifying glass is used for this operation, lest the con- 
 sequent exaggeration of mere scratches should make 
 them appear as serious defects and cause all shells 
 to be rejected. The naked eye must suffice, and a 
 sharp look-out is needed to discover all the tool 
 marks. Since this means a great strain on the 
 eyes all such work is done by daylight for fear of 
 errors resulting from fatigue. 
 
 "In a shop where 844 women are employed, only 
 three defective adjustments out of 80,000 fuses 
 were noted by the inspectors and, after examina- 
 tion, only one fuse was discarded. Thus in such 
 an amount of delicate work requiring so much at- 
 tention, only one mistake was discovered — one in 
 80,000 — in a day chosen at random by the inspec- 
 tors. Sometimes tliere is not a single mistake." 
 
 Her salary has grown, and if it seems low com- 
 pared with American prices, still it is much higher 
 than the former wages of a dressmaker. It is now 
 about one dollar a day for tlie easier work. Better 
 skilled workers may reach 9 francs for ten hours. 
 
 "Women from all classes of society have applied
 
 82 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 for jobs in metal working for war purposes. The 
 offices of workshops know of women who walked 
 by ten times before they decided to step in, and 
 finally did so with tears in their eyes, on account of 
 their prejudice against working with their hands. 
 One of them was a Belgian lady of leisure whose 
 fortune was left in Brussels; another, the wife of a 
 South American bank director. In a few days, un- 
 accustomed as these women were to such work, 
 they had learned how to handle machine tools. In 
 a month they had become skilful. The adaptation 
 to work of women's delicate hands does not require 
 a long time. Embroidery, sewing and household 
 occupations have all accustomed them to the hand- 
 ling of materials. The power to work is in them. 
 
 "The hands of so many men never touch anything 
 but cigarettes and penholders. This war has re- 
 vealed the great adaptability of woman to manual 
 labour. She succeeds in all trades, both in the 
 hardest and in the most delicate. 
 
 "Out of 4,473 women workers brought together 
 in a shell factory in Lyons, there are registered : 
 
 1,326 housewives and servants; 
 1,320 dressmakers; 
 
 690 shop workers; 
 
 360 office girls; 
 23 stenographers; 
 
 349 lacemakers, weavers and box-makers;
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 83 
 
 143 of various trades; 
 236 without any profession; 
 16 mechanics. 
 
 "These women, among whom five per cent, only 
 had any previous experience with some minor form 
 of metal working, have in a few months, thanks to 
 cleverly devised machinery, developed a strong and 
 efficient working body. They have replaced 44.9 
 per cent, of the men in a total of 9,985 employes." 
 
 Of course, immense social consequences are to 
 result from such possibilities which woman dis- 
 covered in herself. "A woman whose living is in- 
 sured by employment will feel independent in her 
 home. How will fairly well-paid labour react upon 
 the woman's heart?" There is a conflict between 
 motherhood and work. Pierre Hamp's conclusion 
 brings a very enlightening interpretation of the 
 present situation: 
 
 "Our national interest of the moment is directly 
 opposed to our permanent national interest, to what 
 really constitutes the perpetuation of France: a 
 sufficient number of Frenchmen. A proper con- 
 cern for our prosperity demands that we turn our- 
 selves deliberately into a country of immigration, 
 attracting healthy stock and reducing our neces- 
 sary working forces as far as possible by the in- 
 genuity of mechanical inventions^'*
 
 84 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 Here again, we find the necessity of carefully 
 adopting American example. For this we are con- 
 fident in the infinite resources of improvisation 
 which are in the race: 
 
 "This labouring force of France, which must al- 
 ways be organized in times of need, has had its 
 total strength calculated by the war, has shown its 
 full vitality and flexibility. Victorious, it will 
 have learned through perils its possibilities for 
 triumph in time of peace. All that it was called 
 upon to do, it has done. It will go on doing so. 
 Experienced by an eff"ort that aroused it to activ- 
 ity from the first rifle to the last hammer, the na- 
 tion learned that it could devour the maddened 
 enemy with its cannon and reap a triumphant for- 
 tune from its labour. From France's war strength 
 will spring her peace strength. She has been 
 through an experience that has revealed her to her- 
 self. She will know how to make her strength a 
 lasting one by maintaining for her industry the 
 power called forth by battle. Her organization for 
 military victory will also help to create her in- 
 dustrial rank. And may she make peace with 
 the same spirit with which she has made war. 
 Every victory is within her. From France the 
 warrior country will arise France the labouring 
 country."
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 85 
 
 Hamp's third pamplet, "La Victoire de la 
 France sur les Frangais," is more of a program and 
 an affirmation of general ideas about the future of 
 France. He points out the dangers, and outlines 
 the remedies. The victory over alcohol is won, if 
 the measures taken against it in time of war are 
 maintained. But France wants a reform in her 
 habits of mind and methods of action. A victory 
 of the Frenchman over himself, or rather of the 
 immortal spirit of France over temporary hesita- 
 tions. This reform was rapidly preparing before 
 the war. " May the young men who have helped 
 to write Victory upon the banners of their regi- 
 ments strive with equal might to place the names of 
 foreign branches upon the letterheads of our com- 
 mercial houses." 
 
 And there is an expression of unlimited hope to 
 be found in his last conclusions: 
 
 "The power latent within us is unknown even to 
 ourselves. We bear within our breasts triumphs 
 as yet unawakened. Our strength in this war has 
 surprised ourselves. Under the shock of reality 
 we have discovered anew our ancient valour and 
 the strength of our limbs. France is far above the 
 conception that the world had formed of her and 
 tliat she had formed of herself. Let us venerate 
 this mysterious power of our race, whence spring
 
 86 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 victories for men to wonder at. . . . Let us not 
 doubt ourselves. We are perfectly capable of tre- 
 mendous and prolonged effort. We can conquer 
 all within ourselves that threatens France." 
 
 Of course, I realize that much that I have said 
 about the possibilities of our concrete co-operation 
 is abstract and vague, and that the young American 
 who reads me has no taste for indulging in uncer- 
 tain schemes, but wants immediate instances, or at 
 least instances likely to be valuable immediately 
 after the war. He may argue that everybody 
 should then make good, and ask if French co-opera- 
 tion will offer a chance to him rather than to his 
 grandchildren. 
 
 Let me show that I had some immediate instance 
 in mind. It is a local and definite one, and I give 
 it because I happen to know the subject well. I 
 suppose that other Frenchmen, if questioned, can 
 give many instances like this one, which has to be 
 generalized. 
 
 I have travelled on five occasions in tlie Balkans, 
 especially through Serbia and the Southern Slav 
 countries. These people are the only strong ob- 
 stacle to Pan-Germanism on its way to the East. 
 They are sturdy and fine. They are warriors and
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 87 
 
 artists. They love their nation and have decided 
 that she shall not die. They have suffered from 
 the war more tlian any other people, except, per- 
 haps, tlie Armenians and the Poles. But there are 
 still about 12 millions of them, resolved to struggle 
 ceaselessly until they obtain freedom for their 
 Jugoslav (Southern Slav) nation. That is a sim- 
 ple and irresistible aspiration, and, like America, 
 Italy and Switzerland in older times, they will suc- 
 ceed because their will is steadfast and their oppo- 
 nents are changing their artificial policies according 
 to circumstances. Their situation is like Bohe- 
 mia's, and Poland's. When these people are free, 
 then Europe will have a chance of peace, not be- 
 fore. That much even the diplomats admit today. 
 So there is an increasing probability of an early 
 and righteous settlement of this national question.^ 
 Now look at this Jugoslavia made free. It in- 
 cludes Serbia restored, and the Austro-Hungarian 
 provinces which are almost entirely peopled by 
 Serbians and their brothers, the Croats and 
 Slovenes. It extends from the vicinity of Italian 
 Trieste to the province of Temesvar, from the Adri- 
 atic coast to the Bulgarian frontier, where the 
 Orient racially begins. Even if national aspira- 
 
 1 See the books of H. Wickham Steed, R, W. Scton-Watson, 
 etc.
 
 88 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 tions are not fully realized at first, it will have 
 outlets on tlie Adriatic Sea, which means direct and 
 free communication with all Western nations. The 
 area of the land is equal to about one-half of 
 France. It contains many mines (the copper mines 
 at Bor. were the most prosperous in the world, and 
 were exploited by a French concern), large for- 
 ests, great wealtli in fruit, fish, and cattle, and large 
 industries of cloth, embroideries, silverwork, etc. 
 
 Jugoslavia has been maintained for ages in a 
 state economically backward because all the forces 
 of the country were employed in a military strug- 
 gle against invasion and resistance to oppression. 
 Conditions were made as hard as possible by 
 mighty Austria, for fear that the national spirit 
 would spread from free Serbia to oppressed 
 Bosnia, Croatia and Dalmatia. 
 
 In the near future, a tremendous economic ex- 
 pansion will take place there. The race is very 
 laborious. But the people are poor, and lack the 
 technicians and the machines. Who will bring 
 them? Assuredly not the Germans. Even before 
 this war the Serbians preferred to sacrifice large 
 advantages to permitting themselves to be invaded 
 through economic participation on the part of am- 
 bitious and hostile countries. 
 
 For a similar reason they will hardly welcome
 
 PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 89 
 
 the rush of business men, speculators and exploiters 
 from some countries, although friendly, for they 
 are too jealous of their national integrity to allow 
 important positions to be occupied by foreigners 
 who may at some time become exigent and, if 
 backed by their governments, jeopardize the safety 
 of the countiy. Small nations have to be cautious 
 about such things. 
 
 But from France and from America nothing of 
 that kind is to be feared — we could not even dream 
 of territorial ambitions in those regions. And it 
 happens tliat America and France are the only two 
 nations who have accomplished a great deal for the 
 Southern Slavs — France, by a long tradition of 
 friendship, by helping to rebuild the Serbian army 
 at Corfu and maintaining the occupation of Salon- 
 ica, also by welcoming the Serbian refugees on her 
 territoiy, and taking up the education of Serbian 
 children; America by steady and generous relief 
 and the sending of surgical and medical missions 
 who have done most effective work. 
 
 After the war, if my previsions are right, Franco- 
 American activity will find a most favourable 
 ground in Jugoslavia, America bringing her meth- 
 ods and material, France bringing the experience of 
 her men, long used to travel there and to business 
 negotiations with the Serbians, being entirely sym-
 
 90 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 pathetic to them and having fought side by side 
 with them. 
 
 But what special interest will young America 
 have in bringing resources of energy to that part 
 of the world? First, the opportunities for rapid 
 success are numerous: reconstruction of cities on 
 modem plans, undertaking of large harbours, the 
 lumber industry, agricultural improvements, means 
 of transportation. The country is healthful and the 
 peasants are intensely democratic. Many young 
 men want broad enterprises and wish also to live 
 within reasonable proximity to civilized centres. 
 They and their wives will appreciate the fact that 
 Southern Slav territory is a few hours from Italy, 
 and one day and a half from Paris. 
 
 I shall not dwell on this suggestion. It is but 
 one instance among many, of the wide activities 
 open to American initiative. Russia is another — 
 much wider, but more distant from the great cities 
 of Western Europe. There again, the true form 
 of successful association would be Franco-Ameri- 
 can. More exactly, young men from France and 
 young men from America, knowing each other well. 
 And the same is applicable to our colonies.
 
 IV 
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 
 
 Forms of influence. Is external influence to be welcome? 
 American writers who are known in France. About French 
 criticism. Translations of literature. Educational exchanges. 
 The philosophers. The literary treasury of contemporary 
 France. Our masters and elders. Recent tendencies. Emile 
 Verhaeren's international value. The new poets of France: 
 More children of Walt Whitman. Schools, groups and critics. 
 The Reviews. War poems. And then? Music in France. 
 
 We have dealt with the concrete foundations and 
 structure of our alliance. Our material exchanges 
 and co-operation will give results little by little. 
 As early as today we may see the effects of mu- 
 tual intellectual influence. 
 
 Here again, the field is too wide to be covered in 
 its entirety. Even to show the parallel evolution 
 and the mutual indebtedness of American and 
 French literary standards in the past 25 years, 
 would be the task of a lifetime and, when achieved, 
 it would have to be started again. 
 
 So as to grasp the present condition of our liter- 
 ary relation, we may specially concern ourselves 
 with the poets. The best of the young poets sup- 
 
 91
 
 92 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 ply the essential expression of a generation, they 
 are usually in advance of it, and they inspire the 
 period which follows. Moreover, they supply the 
 most conscious form of art and that which is most 
 closely connected with ethics. Poets are essen- 
 tially initiators, and the literaiy production of 
 the following epoch largely depends upon them. 
 The work of American orators and novelists might 
 have been regarded mainly as a branch of Eng- 
 lish literature until American poets came and gave 
 the start to new forms of expression and discov- 
 ered fresh sources of inspiration. After them 
 there was an original American literature. A 
 good part of political and social ideals is influ- 
 enced by poets. This may not be true of the sad 
 epoch that preceded us, but it was true of most 
 great epochs whose grandeur was often formulated 
 or even foretold by poets. The Italian and French 
 Renaissance, the Italian Risorgimento in the 19th 
 century, the liberal agitation in Germany about 
 1848,^ the national movements in India and in 
 Ireland had their poets who were their leaders at 
 the same time. In America, I see the germ of an 
 approaching poetical expansion which may be 
 
 1 See the recent book about Georg Herweg;h, the great revo- 
 lutionary poet who fought Prussianism all his life. (Recueil 
 Sirey, publisher, Paris.)
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 93 
 
 splendid. In France what has already been ac- 
 complished I shall try to sum up here. The ques- 
 tion is. What is and what will be the reciprocal ac- 
 tion of our writers? 
 
 Let us go back for a while. The mere nomen- 
 clature of your great writers who had a part in the 
 intellectual and estlietical formation of our own 
 would not be so soon achieved as your modesty 
 might suppose. I was 10 years old when I read 
 Fenimore Cooper. I was 12 when I was presented 
 with Uncle Toms Cabin, 15 when I knew Long- 
 fellow. At 19 I read Poe, with the utmost ad- 
 miration at the very time that I knew the works of 
 the French Symbolist school. I could see what im- 
 mense importance Edgar Allan Poe had had for 
 those pure artists against whom we reacted, but 
 from whom we descend all die same. . . . Poe had 
 strongly impressed Baudelaire, who translated his 
 tales, and Mallarme did the same for the poems. 
 
 I was 23 when I plunged myself into the Leaves 
 of Grass. This succession is that of decreasing 
 popularity. I hear that S. Butler and Thoreau are 
 being translated into French, and that a new French 
 edition of Whitman will soon appear, our best 
 writers having co-operated in the work of transla- 
 tion. Some of your other writers are nearly un- 
 known in France. Hawthorne, Whittier, Bret
 
 94 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 Harte have practically never reached there. As for 
 the influence of French writers on your own pro- 
 ductions, I leave it to American scholars to define. 
 
 The literature of a country may be influenced, 
 from abroad, in two principal ways. First, by 
 foreign writers who are admired, absorbed, imi- 
 tated. Second, by the readers which are abroad, 
 of works from one's own country, readers who 
 accept or reject those works. As the majority of 
 foreign readers are informed and cultivated, the 
 more this last becomes important. 
 
 In the instance of our two countries, this is how 
 I understand our literary relations: The greatest 
 need for France will be to feel the abundant, vigor- 
 ous, generous production of your young writers 
 whose inspiration is related to her own. If we 
 happen to hesitate they will reassure us, owing to 
 their solid virtue of genuine and direct inspiration. 
 And your writers themselves declare that they will 
 welcome the critical sanction of our older literary 
 sense. 
 
 Then there is also that reciprocal influence which 
 will develop from the French reader to the Ameri- 
 can writer. If our relations hold their promise, 
 works written here will be eagerly read, either in 
 English or in translation, by our people, who Vv^ill 
 see more and more what resources of vitality and
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 95 
 
 sincerity are in you. And the French reader, when 
 his sympathy is once aroused, and his negative sense 
 withdrawn a little, is not too bad a critic. We are 
 all of us everywhere too prone to pass sentence on 
 things before we have made acquaintance with them. 
 But when France's admiration is fixed her choice is 
 usually the right one. Perhaps this is because we 
 have still some traces of classical sense left, and 
 classical is to time what universal is to space. 
 Thus it is not surprising that a good training in 
 classical should prepare for a sound appreciation 
 of universal literature. 
 
 Criticism, applied to your work, I propose, of 
 course, in a quite modest form. If the French do 
 not appreciate a book of yours, it does not prove 
 that the book is bad. But if they elect it, admire 
 it, love it, adopt and imitate it, and get impregnated 
 with it, as they have in instances already, then you 
 may be sure that you have a right to be proud of 
 its author. 
 
 Having said this, is it necessary to raise once 
 more the eternal question: Are influences good in 
 themselves? Is foreign influence to be desired or 
 to be feared? My opinion is that of many of our 
 contemporaries. It is that inasmuch as you are 
 strong and have faith and confidence in yourself, 
 you can welcome most unreservedly the influences
 
 96 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 from abroad, fearless that they will carry you out 
 of yourself. Convinced traditionalists ought to be 
 the first to welcome new influences, first because our 
 very traditions (yours and mine) are largely made 
 of foreign influences which were assimilated; an 
 additional reason for such welcome is that the 
 shock and criticism of the foreign thing give pre- 
 cisely the opportunity needed for testing one's own 
 solidity. And a certain, solid, faithful, valuable 
 tradition need not be afraid of the test. We real- 
 ize that our stomach is good enough to dare try 
 more than one kind of food. If we happen to 
 refuse some foreign dish, it may not mean that it is 
 exactly perilous, but that it is of bad taste or is 
 prepared with hands which are not clean (I am 
 thinking of German culture during the past quarter 
 of a century). 
 
 About the benefits of this intellectual exchange 
 between us, I can already testify in what concerns 
 me, and tell what encouragement, what intense stim- 
 ulation I have met in your country, and not only for 
 my present task. What enthusiastic confirmation I 
 found here, of the value of the works I admired, 
 when I compared my standards with those of your 
 best young writers. Indeed I cannot yet measure 
 all that I owe to those meetings and conversations in 
 New York, in Chicago, in Boston, in Princeton, not
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 97 
 
 only for tlie knowledge gained of your literature, 
 but for a better appreciation of my own country's 
 art.^ 
 
 A last answer to a question which is often asked : 
 What is the good of translations? A translation 
 never gives the content of the original and is liable 
 to pervert and falsify the impression which the 
 reader would get if he knew its original language. 
 If he cannot obtain the direct influence of the work, 
 for lack of knowing the language in which it is 
 written, then he had better abstain from any in- 
 complete and delusive science. 
 
 I am quite willing to agree that definitively a 
 translation cannot be equal to an original (although 
 it has sometimes proved to be superior). But I 
 am obliged to confess that I have received through 
 translations stimuli which were exceedingly in- 
 tense. The influence of the Russian novelists on 
 the whole modem world has exerted itself almost 
 exclusively through translations, often through very 
 bad ones. The same in the case of Ibsen. The 
 translations from the English into French usually 
 
 1 A step in the work of mutual interchange is the organiza- 
 tion of systematic sending of the best reviews and books 
 published on each side. Another is my translation into French 
 of Miss A. Lowell's work on the Tendencies in Modern Ameri- 
 can Poetry (American edition published by The Macmillan 
 Co.)- I also intend to give in France a number of studies on 
 contemporary American writers.
 
 98 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 were good, and the translations of Kipling by L. 
 Fabulet and R. d'Humieres, were excellent. The 
 French version of the Just So Stories is a little 
 masterpiece. 
 
 I wish all young writers indulged in the regular 
 practice of translation. It is a wonderful training 
 in the use of their own language. I cannot suffi- 
 ciently advise my American friends that they take 
 the French books which they like and feel to be 
 nearest to their own spirit, and try to give them 
 a form in English. An unexpected communion 
 is attained by this exercise, one which is deeper 
 than any attained through mere reading. It is 
 akin to the pleasure of creation in the company of 
 an author you admire. Now what authors shall 
 I propose for this task? I shall suggest some in the 
 two following chapters. 
 
 Before ending this, I want to say a few words 
 about a special and very important form of intellec- 
 tual exchange, and that is the educational form. 
 A book was recently published which develops 
 that matter much better and more completely than 
 I could ever do. 
 
 It was issued by the Society of American Fellow- 
 ships in French Universities, and is called Science 
 and Learning in France.^ It is the work of numer-
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 99 
 
 ous committees of specialists in every branch of 
 knowledge, and hundreds of" scholars have given 
 their name as sponsors, expressing "a cordial de- 
 sire to join with the authors in making this book 
 a national homage, offered from the universities 
 of America to the universities of France." At the 
 head of the editorial committee are Professor H. 
 Wigmore and Professor Charles H. Grandgent, and 
 the preface is written by Professor Charles W. 
 Eliot, Emeritus President of Harvard University. 
 
 This book is of great moral significance and 
 notable practical value to the students. There is a 
 remarkablecstudy on French philosophers, acknowl- 
 edging the part of initiator that France played in 
 modern times. Twenty-one other matters are sur- 
 veyed. About the general qualities of the French 
 in matter of science and learning, Professor Eliot 
 says: "These characteristics have proved to be 
 extraordinarily permanent, abiding generation after 
 generation, and surviving immense political and 
 social changes. The French scholar is apt to be 
 an open-minded man, receptive toward new ideas, 
 and an ardent lover of truth, fluent, and progres- 
 sive. The French scientists have rarely been ex- 
 treme specialists, narrow in their interests and their 
 chosen objects. They have recognized that no sci- 
 
 iR. R. Donnelly & Sons, The Lakeside Press, Chicago.
 
 100 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 ence can be pursued successfully in isolation. . . . 
 They have not been subdued by the elaborate sorting 
 and compiling machinery of modem scholarship." 
 We may infer from this splendid collective work 
 that reciprocal influence in education is welcome 
 and will know a brilliant future. 
 
 One of the questions I had to abandon, to my 
 great regret, is that of the mutual influence of 
 French and American philosophies. Indeed such 
 matters cannot be dealt with in twenty lines. 
 When I translated the works of Professor J. M. 
 Baldwin and of Professor Ellwood of Missouri 
 University, for the editions of the Societe de Soci- 
 ologie, I had a good chance to appreciate the mul- 
 tiple points of resemblance in the American and 
 French methods of thought, especially in the atti- 
 tude of mind in grasping new questions. A con- 
 versation I had with Mr. Henri Bergson on that 
 subject makes me hope that he will some time de- 
 velop this point and that, thanks to him, we shall 
 more fully know the deep motives, rooted in the 
 very process of thought, which make our alliance 
 what it is. 
 
 I shall now rapidly review the recent past of 
 French literature, insisting on the poetical mani- 
 festations, as I am impatient to come to the con-
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 101 
 
 temporary poets who give expression to the soul of 
 the young men who are my comrades. But it is 
 indispensable to say from who we descend, who are 
 our living masters. Another reason for calling 
 attention to some important figures of the last 
 period is that their value has not yet been fully 
 recognized, and American readers will find an 
 immense benefit in gleaning by themselves in this 
 partly untrodden garden. 
 
 It is difficult to realize how little success is de- 
 pendent upon merit, in France less than anywhere 
 else. There is a non-modest explanation of it in 
 the fact that talent being abundant, success could 
 only reward it when it was joined with some social 
 or commercial cleverness. But a better reason 
 than over-abundance of genius is the extreme divi- 
 sion of the public in little classes who do not easily 
 adopt one another's admirations. So that a man 
 known and silently admired by the very best, might 
 remain all his life unrecognized except by a few 
 hundred people. 
 
 The result and extreme consequence is that for a 
 time, the true artists refused to compete for popular- 
 ity, and made a system, a doctrine indeed, of theii! 
 isolation. Thus, instead of being recognized after 
 their death, like most of the great artists, they be- 
 come known only after the passage of one genera-
 
 102 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 tion of disciples. Now we can perceive rather 
 clearly what were the characteristics of the best 
 schools of 1890, which are today a part of France's 
 classical past. First, they displayed extreme care 
 for a perfect, original, rare form. They had con- 
 tempt for easy sources of inspiration. They looked 
 for an art that not only was entirely sufficient to it- 
 self, but that also despised life as ugly and poor. 
 Art was a reaction against life and an evasion of 
 life — a revenge against it. This is almost exactly 
 the principle of Poe, for whom reality was poison, 
 and this resulted in the perfectly pure and detached 
 work of Mallarme, among others. The result of 
 that period was to leave us some admirable poems, 
 like "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune," or Rimbaud's 
 "Bateau Ivre." They are still the privilege of very 
 few admirers. 
 
 Another result was the conquest of new forms in 
 poetry. These poets did not accept the former laws 
 of versification; but discovered and adopted new 
 ones. And the new exigencies of modern verse are 
 perhaps even more strict than the old uniform rules 
 of metre and rhyme. Free verse (this name is 
 very improper) introduced in poetry many possi- 
 bilities and nuances that the regular alexandrine 
 verse did not afford. Moreover, irregular verse is 
 nothing new, since it is claimed to descend from
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGF 103 
 
 La Fontaine and from the verses of the Bible. 
 Now poetry is being appreciated according to its 
 qualities of lyrism rather than the degree of obe- 
 dience to fixed material rules which it mani- 
 fests. 
 
 These discussions are much too special for our 
 subject. Let us rapidly recall to mind the names of 
 Albert Samain, Henri de Regnier, Francis Viele- 
 Griffin (who is of American birth), as being the 
 initiators of these reforms. Jean Moreas re- 
 mained faithful to strict metrical tradition. 
 
 Viele-Grifhn ^ is mostly inspired by Greek an- 
 tiquity, but renders it with a power of actual pres- 
 ence, of simple and delicate grandeur, which gives 
 to his poems die serenity of ever-beautiful work. 
 
 Henri de Regnier ^ is now a member of the 
 French Academic, and thus incarnates the recon- 
 ciliation of the noblest French tradition and of the 
 latest conquests of "modem" poetry. 
 
 Let us then travel to the southern extremity of 
 France. At the foot of tlie Pyrenees, is a sunny 
 little town, Orthez. There we find the poet Francis 
 Jammes,^ who loves the poor, the animals, the 
 
 iLo ClarU de Vie (Mercure de France), etc. 
 
 2 La Sandale AiUe, Les MMailles d'Argile, Les Jeux 
 Rustiqiies et Divins, etc., and several novels. 
 
 3 De I'angelus de I'auhe a I'ancjelus du soir, L'Eglise ImhilUe 
 de feuilles, Clairi^res dans le del, Le Deuil des Primevbres,
 
 104 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 gardens, the seasons, the young girls and the other 
 things of God. He writes about them simple 
 poems where the blood of Virgil runs and sings,^ 
 Francis Jammes has to be mentioned in the first 
 rank of the poets who had influence and were 
 continued by disciples. Comtesse Mathieu de 
 
 Le Triomphe de la Vie, Le Roman clu LUvre (a book of most 
 adorable prose), etc., and recently Le Rosaire au Soleil. 
 
 1 Here is the Prayer to enter Paradise with the Donkeys, 
 which I quote from Miss A. Lowell's book, Six French Poets: 
 
 "When the time for going to you will have come, O my God, 
 let it be on a day when the countryside is dusty with a festi- 
 val. I wish, just as I do here, to choose the road and go 
 as I please to Paradise, where there are stars in broad day- 
 light. I will take my stick and I will go along the high-road, 
 and I will say to the donkeys, my friends: 'I am Francis 
 Jammes and I am going to Paradise,' for there is no hell in 
 the country of the good God. I will say to them: 'Come, gen- 
 tle friends of the blue sky, poor, dear animals, who, with a 
 sudden movement of the ears, drive away silver flies, blows, 
 and bees. . . .' 
 
 "Grant that I appear before you in the midst of these ani- 
 mals that I love so much, because they hang their heads gently, 
 and when they stop put their little feet together in a very 
 sweet and pitiful way. I shall arrive followed by their mil- 
 lions of ears, followed by those who carry baskets on their 
 flanks, by those who draw the acrobats' carts, or carts of 
 feather-dusters and tinware, by those who have dented cans 
 on their backs, she-asses full like gourds, with halting steps, 
 and those on whom they put little pantaloons because of the 
 blue and running sores which the obstinate flies make, stick- 
 ing in circles. My God, grant that I come to you with these 
 asses. Grant that angels conduct us in peace to tufted 
 streams, where glossy cherries quiver, which are like the 
 laughing flesh of young girls, and grant that, leaning over 
 your divine waters in this place of souls, I become like the 
 donkeys who mirror their humble and gentle poverty in the 
 clearness of eternal love."
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 105 
 
 Noailles ^ is another poet, with more pride and 
 also more anxiety, but she is near to Jammes, whom 
 she deeply admires, in many aspects of her work. 
 She is a great, noble, restless soul, with an ex- 
 traordinary power of projecting magnificence 
 around her. Slie has ennobled and exalted the 
 humble plants from the gardens as well as wor- 
 shipped the heroes. She has been criticized for 
 this; but I suppose that in order to give grandeur 
 to everything one has first to possess an unusual 
 amount of grandeur in oneself. She always wrote 
 in regular verse, enclosing therein the mystical and 
 tragic conflicts which constantly arise in this gen- 
 erous and tormented heart. 
 
 A decidedly powerful influence on the present 
 French literature is Paul Claudel's. His genius is 
 so strong and so new, that a long preparation would 
 be necessary to approach and define him. Six 
 years ago he was all but unknown. Today he is 
 famous. His work is mostly poems and dramas,^ 
 wherein a pure catholic orthodoxy is to be found 
 together with the most daring audacities in the use 
 of the resources of French prosody. 
 
 1 Le Coeur Innombrablc, Les Eblouissements, Les Vivants et 
 les ^fn^■f.t. le Vhnne EmervpiUo, etc. 
 
 -Cinq Grandes Odes, L'Arbre (dramas), Connaissance de 
 I' Est (a book of prose on the spectacles of the East, written 
 when Claudel was a consul in China), L'Otage (a drama), 
 etc. — and his Po^mes de Guerre.
 
 106 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 Other important figures in today's poetry are 
 Paul Fort, author of the many "Ballades Fran- 
 gaises," Andre Suares, who also wrote books of es- 
 says and criticism of high value, Andre Spire, 
 Henri Gheon, Paul Fargue, Jean Schlumberger, 
 each of whom deserves a long appreciation, which 
 cannot find place here. But a mere nomenclature 
 of the influences acting upon us could not omit their 
 names. 
 
 Charles Peguy ^ has a place among the poets, 
 owing to his "Mysteres," the first one being a deeply 
 beautiful restitution of Joan of Arc's childhood and 
 vocation. 
 
 The two masters whose action I regard as most 
 decisive on the inspiration and work of the young 
 are Andre Gide and Emile Verhaeren. Of the first 
 I shall say nothing in this article, because I can- 
 not resign myself to limit his definition to a few 
 sentences, and because his tremendous influence on 
 the artists whom I know has been so multiform, so 
 subtle, that it would be a vain and poor attempt 
 to try to detect it in a rapid analysis. All that I 
 can say is that I owe everything to him.^ 
 
 1 See Part I. 
 
 zLes Nourritures Terrestres, La Porte Etroite, Pritextes, 
 Novveaux Pretextes, etc. Readers who wish to know him 
 better have to open, first, his works, second, Jacques Riviere's
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 107 
 
 At the Rouen railway station, in November, 1916, 
 Emile Verhaeren was killed beneath the wheels of 
 a passing train. The greatest of Belgian poets, and 
 one of the most noble workers in the French lan- 
 guage was taken from us. But if there is a man 
 who should dwell permanently among us, living 
 more and more in his work and example, it is Emile 
 Verhaeren. 
 
 Alive, who was his superior? Hot blood circu- 
 lated in his veins, his thought was a glowing cru- 
 cible, in which matters were submitted to a fiery 
 test. His voice rapped out words that, with a 
 gesture, he seemed to fling into space. He tramped 
 forward, shoulders rounded, like the abutment of 
 an arch, as one ready to push forward something 
 heavy. His physical appearance inspired more 
 than one artist, and the best portraits of him that re- 
 main are without doubt those drawn by his friend 
 and compatriot, Theo Van Rysselberghe. The face 
 seamed, wrinkled, and grief worn, but the eyes 
 clear and bright; the moustache long and drooping; 
 the hand hot and nervous, seeming always ready to 
 seize an object and to remodel it. His speech was 
 simple and cordial, and even enthusiastic, and his 
 heart was infinitely youthful. If one speaks of the 
 
 Etudes, which contain the best survey of his genius and pro- 
 duction.
 
 108 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 presence of mind of certain men, it is necessary in 
 the case of Verhaeren to speak of the presence of 
 heart. 
 
 His supreme title to fame will rest in his having 
 welded at the heat of that red forge, his heart, the 
 lyricism of great poetic inspiration and the reality 
 of modem life. He carried with him a love of 
 reality, and he turned aside from nothing. The 
 real commenced with his own body, with the physi- 
 cal joy of recognizing the world through his 
 senses. 
 
 I love my eyes, tny arms, 
 
 My hands, my flesh, my frame, 
 
 And my hair thick and fair, 
 
 And with my lungs, 
 
 I wish to drink in all space, 
 
 In order to swell my strength. 
 
 This he writes in the fulness of life, and later — 
 
 I thank you, my body, 
 For being still firm and quick 
 To the touch of the swift winds, 
 Or of the low breezes. 
 
 And you, my straight frame, 
 And my strong lungs, 
 Breathing by the seashore, 
 Or on the mountain. 
 The keen and radiant air 
 Which enwraps the world.
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 109 
 
 Impelled by such elements of fervour, the poet 
 could scarcely go astray, whatever might be the 
 parabola described by his spirit. He possessed 
 the true light which was never lacking, and which 
 did not deceive. 
 
 "Instinct rivets to my brow a sufficient cer- 
 tainty." 
 
 Verhaeren took up the task of the artist as the 
 result of a supreme election. It was to this higher 
 form of life that he devoted himself. He listened 
 to the temptation irresistible to a high spirit. 
 
 "Mark the deep rhythms of the Universe ! 
 Oh ! to define progress in a passing image, 
 In a sudden language; 
 To note it in the rough seas, 
 Upon the mountain height, 
 In the rage of the wind, 
 In the clash of thunder 
 In the softness of a woman's footfall. 
 In the light of the eyes, 
 In the pity of the hands. 
 In the manifest uprising 
 Of a super-human being. 
 In the tempest of sex, 
 In the hours of folly, 
 In all that deceives. 
 In all that hears, 
 In all that disrupts. 
 In all that unites 
 To captivate the infinite intelligence."
 
 110 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 And when he translates the powerful joy of 
 workmanship, how full are these words to the 
 artist! 
 
 The bones, the blood, the nerves 
 
 Make alliance 
 
 With one knows not what trembling 
 
 In the air and in the wind. 
 
 One feels light and bright as space, 
 
 One rejoices to give thanks. 
 
 Facts, principles, laws — 
 One comprehends all. 
 The heart trembles with love, 
 And the spirit seems mad 
 With the intoxication of ideas! 
 
 That which Verhaeren manifests before all is 
 a simple and yet fervent virility. Nobody can be 
 gentler or at times rougher, more brutal or more 
 tender in turn. He is the great wind which both 
 ravages and caresses. He is the pure voice of na- 
 ture, complex and alarming. Above all, his work 
 weighs. His most largely winged verses are al- 
 ways cut from hard metal, and those most charged 
 with divine spirit are in solid blocks, four-sided, 
 like the masonry of a cathedral which cannot be 
 destroyed by cannon. 
 
 The general effect of his work is ample and gen- 
 erous. The heart of the poet traverses and ex- 
 presses the most tragic crises. Strenuous conflicts,
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 111 
 
 and stormy images torment the soul and suspend it 
 in space. All problems of universal or of indi- 
 vidual ethics are found agitating in the poems of 
 Verhaeren. No one is more deeply enrooted in the 
 life of his time, and I do not believe that a person 
 exists who has more completely expressed the mean- 
 ing of life, its labours, its despairs, its pride, and its 
 "multiple splendour." 
 
 His works are far from unknown in America, 
 where various translations are in circulation, 
 thanks to Arthur Symons, Jethro Bithell, Alma 
 Strettel, Joyce Kilmer and others. 
 
 The glory of Verhaeren was essentially interna- 
 tional. His popularity was perhaps greatest in 
 Russia. Thousands of readers, and especially 
 young men, have vibrated to his thrilling strophes, 
 to the unbridled work of his youth. ("Les 
 Flamandes," "Les Moines," "Les Flambeaux 
 Noirs.") 
 
 "Les Villes Tentaculaires" tell of the devouring 
 intensity of the industrial forges and factories, and 
 the drama of the deserted countryside. 
 
 "Les Visages de la Vie" (1899), "La Multiple 
 Splendeur" (1902), "Les Forces Tumulteuses," 
 (1906), "Les Rythmes Souverains" (1910) mark 
 his most characteristic epochs, if not tlie apogee of 
 his power, and in his late years this power was not 
 diminished but softened.
 
 112 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 He gives another expression of himself in poems 
 of tenderness and serenity, as in "Les Heures de 
 Soir," "Bles Mouvants," in poems dedicated to 
 heroic memories, as in the description of his 
 Fatherland— "Toute la Flandre." Between these 
 appear the dramas — "Philippe II," "Le Cloitre," 
 "Les Aubes," and "Helen of Sparta," which was 
 produced magnificently in Paris in 1912. 
 
 The basis of his ethic is admiration. Little by 
 little in the course of his work other forces dissolve 
 or mingle as streams which join a river. His re- 
 volts are gradually absorbed by the love which dom- 
 inates, simply because with Verhaeren, in whom 
 so many forces operated, love was the strongest. 
 
 "He who may read me in the days to come, 
 
 May he know my transports and my joy 
 Amid cries, revolts and tears, 
 See me rush into combat, proud and manly. 
 Free from sorrow and attracting love, 
 As one conquers one's prey. 
 
 He foresaw clearly, the times and the passions to 
 come, and presented them with all his genius, fore- 
 telling their approach in a strophe which is perhaps 
 of all the most beautiful. 
 
 A vast hope springs from the unknown, 
 Displacing the ancient balance
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE ' 113 
 
 Of which our souls are weary 
 Nature makes ready to engrave 
 A new visage for eternity. 
 Everything stirs and it seems 
 That the horizon moves forward. 
 
 Of his life work the synthesis was complete, the 
 harmony without reproach, and this great and gen- 
 erous power for years satisfied himself merely 
 with kindness and goodness. As he had led "a 
 life having nothing in common with death," ^ 
 neither present bitterness nor the ashes of a past 
 sorrow could extinguish his pure flame. 
 
 His life was divided between the little house at 
 St. Cloud, near Paris, and his retreat at Caillou-qui- 
 Bique, in Belgium, where he passed the summer. 
 
 And then the inexpiable thing happened. 
 
 August, 1914, raining blood and disaster, burst 
 on his loyal and pacific little country. The incen- 
 diary, the assassin, the violator struck it down. 
 The unbridled brutality of an invader who already 
 believed himself victorious was let loose upon his 
 beloved country. Verhaeren was advancing in 
 years, and the blow was terrible. He suffered pro- 
 foundly in spirit and body, and was almost suc- 
 cumbing to the sorrow which filled his soul at the 
 sight of the devastation of all that he cherished. 
 
 1 Vildrac.
 
 114 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 Nevertheless, the energy which burned in his be- 
 ing kept him erect, and the peaceable man of letters 
 became a combatant. All that was his of fervour, 
 of indignation, and also of simple devotion he 
 placed at the sei-vice of his murdered yet always 
 living country. He saw the burned cities, he saw 
 the army pent in the last field of its natal soil. He 
 saw the King amid his soldiers, and he wrote pas- 
 sionately of these sombre things. 
 
 "La Belgique Sanglante!" — Emile Verhaeren, 
 after all his works of love, emitted this great cry of 
 anger. This book is from the outset a loyal and 
 irrefutable document. When many other pam- 
 phlets are forgotten, it will remain as a redoubtable 
 instrument and a powerful manifestation of resist- 
 ance and of faith. 
 
 In the midst of many statements of facts he does 
 not fail to make allusion and render homage to the 
 generosity of America. Between him and that 
 country a pronounced comprehension existed, which 
 had not to wait for the splendid enthusiasm and 
 generosity of the United States towards his mar- 
 tyred nation. Like his compatriot Emile Vander- 
 velde, and also Dr. Depage, Emile Verhaeren was 
 a firm believer in democracy. At the same time 
 he was a personal friend of King Albert, and in 
 this friendship between king and poet, between
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 115 
 
 public man and man of science, one may ask who 
 was the more ennobled? I think it was Belgium 
 herself. 
 
 Presently appeared The Red Wings of War, that 
 book of poems written during the sanguinary tor- 
 ment of Belgium. It is not equal to the Ver- 
 haeren of the years of happiness, fervour and for- 
 tune, but such pieces as "The Country to its Dead 
 Soldiers" and "A Strip of Countiy" are supreme 
 in their alliance of anger with tenderness. Never- 
 theless, one fact makes us inconsolable. Great 
 patriot that he was, he will not assist in the deliver- 
 ance of his people and will not see in Brussels re- 
 stored the King re-enter on horse-back, amid the 
 fervent greetings of a resuscitated nation — the King 
 sans peur, of whom Verhaeren's last book sang. 
 
 Comes that day of glory when the soldiers of 
 Albert I, laughing yet terrible, shall re-enter Dix- 
 mude, Bruges, Liege and also the little village of 
 Caillou-qui-Bique, 
 
 Verhaeren is dead . . . 
 
 What will be, in the time to come, the influence 
 of Verhaeren and his work? I believe that it will 
 increase and be immense. This fine and yet prim- 
 itive soul will exercise a powerful influence upon 
 the spirits of the approaching epoch. The war-
 
 116 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 riors on their return will require nourishment, 
 healthful and sustaining, and the influence of Ver- 
 haeren is that above all, apart from his naive lu- 
 cidity. He warns us that "one must love, in order 
 to understand with genius." 
 
 One has often compared the inspiration of Ver- 
 haeren with that of Walt Whitman, and in many re- 
 spects their characters resemble each other. It is 
 to Hugo also that he belongs, in certain excesses 
 even, that is to say, his indulgence in flamboyant 
 imagery, his striking contrasts and grandiloquent 
 epithets are the natural excesses of an almost too 
 generous soul. His faults even are an aspect of his 
 grandeur. 
 
 In truth, I believe that the time will come when 
 the works of Verhaeren will be regarded with the 
 highest enthusiasm, and indeed that time is already 
 at hand. 
 
 French literature of today shows the marks of 
 one American influence which may well be called 
 decisive. Walt Whitman's blood runs in the veins 
 of the young writers of France, and was infused 
 there through more than one channel. We first 
 knew "Leaves of Grass," thanks to the translation 
 by Leon Bazalgette, which was published by the 
 Mercure de France, rfien we read it in English.
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 117 
 
 Shall I call our young poets disciples of his? 
 Whitman would smile at this. The old master 
 whom they never saw but can imagine, never cared 
 for disciples in tlie narrow sense of that word. 
 Maybe tliey know little of him, and understand him 
 wrong — still not wrong enough to call themselves 
 his disciples! Some writers of ours used a verse 
 very similar to his. But his influence on a few 
 poets is small, compared to his action on the men- 
 tality of the young in general. It is more vital 
 than the discovery of a new resource in rhythm or 
 in melody. It is an immensely renewed inspira- 
 tion which is proposed by this American, and which 
 is one of the treasures of our times. 
 
 He and Verhaeren, our masters, are, indeed, like 
 some proud and gigantic stems, whence we, their 
 branches, may borrow a stimulating sap. I remem- 
 ber the word of Alphonse Daudet's litde son when 
 he saw Ivan Turgeniev coming into his father's 
 house, arm in arm with Gustave Flaubert: "But 
 all your friends are giants, then?" 
 
 These giants who dictate the rhythm of our liter- 
 ary life have opened to the world's poetry a new 
 field, and what a field ! — that of modem life. They 
 sang of the cities, of industrial work, and physical 
 ejffort. Their teaching is the one which will be de- 
 manded by the men returned from the war: a teach-
 
 118 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 ing of strength, fervor and simplicity*. But we did 
 not wait for the war to read and admire them. 
 
 The universe seems to be wider since their 
 voices praised its various parts, countries, crea- 
 tures, emotions, constructions, details. . . . We 
 are no more the men we were before we read "Song 
 of Myself." 
 
 Let me quote, almost in full, one of the best 
 poems of Charles Vildrac's Livre d' Amour} Do 
 I mistake in regarding this as affiliated to your con- 
 temporary inspiration, either still latent or coming 
 to expression? 
 
 The Conquerors 
 
 Behold the cavaher without a horse, — but whoever 
 sees him pass will know him for a Knight. 
 
 Behold the pilgrim with neither staff nor breviary, 
 — but whoever sees him pass will know that he is more 
 than a crusader. 
 
 Behold the chief who does not command, but whoever 
 listens to him will know him for a captain. 
 
 Behold the conqueror without an army, — but the only 
 conqueror — he who knows how to talk with everybody, 
 both men and women; and can make good tears shine 
 in their eyes again, and can give back to them the clear 
 laughter of children. 
 
 1 Nouvelle Bevue Frangaise, publisher. Translation by Miss 
 E. Eyre.
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 119 
 
 His best weapons are his friendly eyes, his thought- 
 ful and surprising kindnesses, — it is the way his voice 
 gives help to his words, it is the way his spirit dances 
 like a torch. 
 
 He is prodigal and bare as a tree in the spring, his 
 heart is warm as a greenhouse in winter; and one aban- 
 dons oneself to whatever he says, — again it is he who, 
 when he takes, gives. 
 
 He will come wherever you are. He will not sit 
 down beside you as do those to whom the half of your 
 face and but one of your shoulders suffice. 
 
 But he will sit down opposite you, his knees touch- 
 ing your knees, your hands within reach of his hands, 
 and his eyes bearing upon your eyes, forcing them to 
 uncover. 
 
 And you will say: Where have I seen him before? 
 
 As in singing under a vault one discovers the single 
 note which makes the whole vibrate and become its 
 warm voice. 
 
 So his words agitate in your lifted throat the beautiful 
 voice that it imprisons, of which you had not suspicion, 
 — your best voice, your only voice. 
 
 He will love you in your own way, with the presents 
 you would have chosen, with his bluntness, with his 
 laughter, his humility or his pity; he will love you as 
 much as it is necessary to soften you and win you. 
 
 You will wonder: Wliat does he expect from me? 
 Wliat will he ask of me tomorrow? And you will be 
 troubled, never suspecting that really, without know- 
 ing it himself, he expects from you the reason for his 
 existence; that you are necessary to him as the words 
 one speaks, the ears that receive them, as beautiful 
 things to the eyes that surround them.
 
 120 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 For conquest is his great desire; like heroes and like 
 women, he loves to feel himself fondled by the scat- 
 tered thoughts of men, which, from a great distance, 
 lean towards him as benumbed fingers stretch towards a 
 fire. 
 
 On certain nights, his hands, pressing together, are 
 warm the while he gently inclines his head, for he is 
 aware, confusedly, that his name has just been spoken 
 in many dwellings where he has been. 
 
 Houses close to him, and houses remote from him, 
 resembling each other in nothing but in his love as a bap- 
 tism. So you will be one of his victories, followed by 
 another and still others. 
 
 The strength of his heart will bend towards him the 
 proud and contemptuous people, as it will enfold those 
 that are weak. 
 
 It is not the custom among men to consecrate oneself 
 and give, expecting nothing in return ; and to balance his 
 great love it is the love of many that he demands. . . . 
 
 Into a land of little hope, under an aged sun that 
 long had looked serene on men both gay and sad, there 
 came, one day, this conqueror, in fire for keen and vivid 
 conquering. Indefatigable he makes his way, tracing 
 his path before his steps as one would plough. 
 
 And the vagrants that he passed, loved him dumbly 
 like dogs. 
 
 And with an awkward and simple tenderness the sim- 
 ple villages loved him. 
 
 And in their crowded waves, their voices thick with 
 tears and their clamours rising in vast clouds, and their 
 enormous and childish joy, the feverish and pallid cities 
 loved him. 
 
 Until one day, delicious miracle! another is born,
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 121 
 
 endowed as he, another arises, jealous of his renown, 
 and marches like him through the country — prodigal of 
 the best in him, and reaping, reaping victories. 
 
 And then will other conquerors unexpectedly arise, 
 and as there have been a hundred conquerors, so now 
 must one become a hundred times a lover, a hundred 
 times beloved. 
 
 . . . And those that have been conquered a hundred 
 times will also wish to conquer. 
 
 And the time will come in the country, the time of the 
 great conquest, when people with this longing will leave 
 the thresholds of their doors, to go the one to meet the 
 other. 
 
 And the time will come in this country, when history 
 will be made of nothing but choruses of songs, but 
 dances hand in hand, but one combat and one victory! 
 
 Vildrac belongs to the group of the Unanimists, 
 whose chief was Jules Romains. In Romains' La 
 Vie Unanime,^ we find the verses which perhaps 
 formulate most absolutely this new creed. They 
 looked for inspiration not so much in individual 
 feelings or passions, as in the life and movements 
 of collectivities. Whether this school will con- 
 tinue to exist as a group I do not know. But I have 
 a great faith in the works that will come from some 
 of its members. 
 
 The very movement and sound of Whitman are 
 to be found in some of Valery Larbaud's poems, 
 preceding his "Bamabooth's Diary." And may I 
 
 1 Mercure de France, publisher.
 
 122 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 quote this fragment of an unpublished chant "To 
 America," which was written in 1917 by a very 
 young poet, Mireille Havet? 
 
 "Glorious cities of America, 
 
 Tumultuous cities, and well populated. 
 
 Cities rich with the future which will cover us all, 
 
 I salute you, today, from my little corner in France, 
 
 From my corner of a city in France, 
 
 From the corner of my table. 
 
 "Ah, never was it graver to be young. 
 
 Graver to be impatient. 
 
 With that conquering desire, which comes from the pride 
 to be the last ones 
 
 . . . The last of all, when the others were living, 
 
 . . . The first, now that we are alone! 
 
 And the words shall come from us 
 
 Or eternally remain silent. 
 
 And judgment shall come from us, and action. 
 
 Or our cities will remain in ashes, and our dead non- 
 buried ! 
 
 "We find ourselves at the edge of the fresh ridge; 
 The seed that we hold is very different. 
 
 "America, let our generation be the piers of a bridge 
 
 Stretching itself between the various nations. 
 
 Let our hands grasp each other. 
 
 Let us stand firm 
 
 And be worthy of this Earth, which men, until now,
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 123 
 
 Did but divide between themselves in a bloody fashion. 
 "I salute you, well-populated cities of America, 
 And my heart goes to you 
 Leaping with hope." 
 
 There are many names, -which I would give: 
 Rene Arcos, Georges Duhamel, Frangois Porche 
 and many others. But let me once more turn JDack 
 to Henri Franck, who would lead our troop today 
 were he still among us.^ The first part of his Danse 
 devant VArche ended with this affirmation of en- 
 thusiasm for the Universe: 
 
 "Adolescent runner, with unwearied heart, 
 I shall reach the clearing where one comes upon God. 
 One day I shall know the thing I so strongly desire, 
 And my spirit will be multiplied and stretched with the 
 
 waiting; 
 For nothing exists in earth or heaven 
 That the determination of my seeking wisdom may not 
 
 know. 
 One day I shall find the divine current. 
 And with the feel of its powerful flow against my back, 
 A joyous bather abandoning myself to the sweep of the 
 
 stream. 
 On this glorious bed, between the superb banks of the 
 
 Universe laden with houses and fruits. 
 Supple of body, light of heart, swift of spirit. 
 In the turbulent water of life I shall swim with power 
 
 and pleasure." 
 
 iSee Part I.
 
 124 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 And in the last part, reaching a higher point of 
 knowledge and wisdom, without losing his power 
 of fervour, but having transformed its object: 
 
 "Truth is enthusiasm without hope, 
 
 Ardour unquenchable, 
 
 Joy that mounts straight up into the black sky, 
 
 The perfect happiness of fervour without recompense, 
 
 The high happiness of feeling keenly one's existence, 
 
 Of being alive!" 
 
 The fragments I have chosen to quote are not 
 the most perfect that I could have found, but the 
 ones which seemed to me to give the sense of our 
 next tendencies in poetry; its characteristics being 
 the universal, the direct, and, as so, essentially able 
 to be exchanged from country to country. And I 
 find much of the same characteristics in the living 
 American poets whom I happened to read. There 
 is no reason why France should not give a cordial 
 recognition to poets like Edgar Lee Masters, E. A. 
 Robinson, Amy Lowell, Vachel Lindsay, Witter 
 Bynner, Ridgely Torrence, James Oppenheim, 
 Louis Ledoux, and others. The more genuinely 
 American will be the more welcome, since American 
 attitude of mind now means that broad and 
 understanding sympathy that we are looking for 
 in our own best leaders. I am strangely impa- 
 tient to see the day when I shall try to give to a few
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 125 
 
 in Paris an idea of tlie movement and rhythm of 
 "The Congo" or "General Booth" by Vachcl Lind- 
 say. Lindsay's muse essentially belongs to Spring- 
 field, Illinois, and knows no other shores, but that 
 is precisely why we shall be glad to welcome her, 
 with her bright cheeks and well-knit muscles, and 
 her surprise to find herself among us. This is no 
 mere curiosity or dilettantism. What we really 
 love will become a part of ourselves, as Poe and 
 Whitman did in the past. 
 
 In the literary life of France, during the past few 
 years, there was not to be found the strict division 
 and classification in schools and "chapelles" which 
 the former period had known. The writers might 
 be classified according to die reviews in which 
 they used to have their works published, but the 
 tendency of each review was much less definite than 
 before, and many writers contributed to several 
 of them. It often happens that a group which is 
 politically conservative, proves to be over-advanced 
 in its literary form of expression; like, for in- 
 stance, the Occident magazine, which holds to 
 catholic tradition and which publishes works whose 
 form a defender of classical rules would call rev- 
 olutionary. 
 
 Most of the best books published in the past fif-
 
 126 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 teen years appeared in the Mercure de France edi- 
 tions, and the collection of the Mercure magazine 
 itself can be regarded as forming the best history of 
 recent French literature. Other periodicals which 
 played a large part in its evolution were La Revue 
 Blanche, U Er milage, La Phalange, Vers et Prose 
 (edited by Paul Fort). Charles Peguy's Cahiers 
 de la Quinzaine also contain much of our best 
 production. 
 
 In 1909, La Nouvelle Revue Francaise was 
 started and soon gathered most of what was living 
 and valuable in the various tendencies of contem- 
 porary writing. Two years later it opened a pub- 
 lishing branch, now very successful, and in 1913 
 its spirit was brought into the Theatre du Vieux- 
 Colombier, founded by Jacques Copeau. The war 
 stopped all these activities, except as to tlie publish- 
 ing of books. But in 1917-1918 the Theatre du 
 Vieux-Colombier will be transported to New York, 
 and this will bring one more opportunity of under- 
 standing and penetration between the advanced 
 literary elements of both countries. 
 
 There are many other active groups, which I 
 could enumerate, did this book pretend to give a 
 complete account of our intellectual life. But my 
 purpose was only to suggest and awaken interest. 
 The Americans who desire to know more about us
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 127 
 
 will have no difficulty in discovering that I have 
 treated a very small part of my subject. But I can 
 introduce them to other guides and to better ones. 
 They are the essayists and critics who gave intel- 
 ligent and passionate commentaries on that life 
 of ours. On your way to France, read the books 
 of Andre Suares,^ Remy de Gourmont's Prome- 
 nades Litteraires, Andre Gide's Pretextes and 
 Nouveaux Pretextes, and Jacques Riviere's Etudes, 
 which are on the border where criticism meets 
 poetry herself. 
 
 For those who are interested in the questions of 
 poetical technique, I think that with Nos Directions, 
 by H. Gheon, the little book by Vildrac and Du- 
 hamel ^ would be of great profit. It shows what 
 the young men of that group regard as important in 
 the form, according to their present standards. 
 
 War has not proven, of course, to be creative of 
 beautiful works of art. The four poets whom I 
 shall name as having written the most remarkable 
 songs during that dark period did but apply to a 
 new subject a lyrism and a form which they al- 
 
 1 Sur la Vie, Essais, Portraits, Trois Hommes (Pascal, 
 Ibsen, Dostoievsky), etc. 
 
 iNotes sur la Technique poHique (Figui^re, Paris).
 
 128 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 ready possessed. About the war itself, I expect 
 the only valuable and great works will appear much 
 later on. The Iliad was not composed under the 
 walls of Troy besieged. 
 
 Shortly before Emile Verhaeren's death, in the 
 autumn of 1916, the Mercure de France published 
 his book of poems: Les Ailes Rouges de la Guerre. 
 Mr. Joyce Kilmer translated "Cathedral," ^ which 
 is among the strongest things in the volume. I 
 quote from it: 
 
 He who walks through the meadows of Champagne 
 
 At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear, 
 
 Sees it draw near 
 Like some great mountain set upon the plain, 
 From radiant dawn until the close of day, 
 
 Nearer it grows 
 
 To him who goes 
 Across the country. When tall towers lay 
 
 Their shadowy pall 
 
 Upon his way, 
 
 He enters, where 
 The solid stone is hollowed deep by all 
 Its centuries of beauty and of prayer. 
 
 • ...•.•• 
 
 At once, they set their cannon in its way. 
 
 There is no gable now, nor wall 
 That does not suffer, night and day, 
 
 As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall. 
 
 1 It appeared in Mr. Kilmer's recent book, Main f^freet and 
 Other Poems (Doran, New York). We quote it with the kind 
 permission of the author and publisher.
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 129 
 
 The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower; 
 
 The triple nave, the aspe, the lonely choir 
 Are circled, hour by hour, 
 
 With thundering bands of fire 
 And Death is scattered broadcast among men. 
 And then 
 
 That which was splendid with baptismal grace; 
 The stately arches soaring into space, 
 The transepts, columns, windows grey and gold. 
 The organ, in whose tones the ocean rolled. 
 The crypts, of mighty shades the dwelling places, 
 The Virgin's gentle hands, the Saints' pure faces, 
 All, even the pardoning hands of Christ the Lord, 
 Were struck and broken by the wanton sword 
 Of sacrilegious lust. 
 
 O beauty slain, glory in the dust! 
 
 Strong walls of faith, most basely overthrown! 
 
 The crawling flames, like adders glistening. 
 
 Ate the white fabric of this lovely thing. 
 
 Now from its soul arose a piteous moan. 
 
 The soul that always loved the just and fair. 
 
 Granite and marble loud their woe confessed, 
 
 The silver monstrances that Popes had blessed. 
 
 The chalices and lamps and crosiers rare 
 
 Were seared and twisted by a flaming breath; 
 
 The horror everywhere did range and swell, 
 
 The guardian Saints into this furnace fell. 
 
 Their bitter tears and screams were stilled in death. 
 
 Around the flames armed hosts are skirmishing, 
 The burning sun reflects the lurid scene; 
 The German army, fighting for its life, 
 Rallies its torn and terrified left wing;
 
 130 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 And, as they near this place 
 
 The imperial eagles see 
 
 Before them in their flight, 
 Here, in the solemn night, 
 The old cathedral, to the years to be 
 
 Showing, with wounded arms, their own disgrace. 
 
 Paul Claudel first published Trois Poemes de 
 guerre, and later Autres Poemes durant la guerre. 
 The former have become well known, especially the 
 first of them: "Tant que vous voudrez, mon 
 general," which seems to embody the fighting spirit 
 and the desire for sacrifice of the man in the 
 trench. 
 
 Frangois Porche also published two small books: 
 U Arret sur la Marne and Le Poeme de la Tranchee. 
 The former relates to the breaking out of the war, 
 the German attack, and the retreat until the critical 
 moment when the French armies were ordered to 
 stop the victorious invader — which they did. Here 
 is that moment, told as a marvellous story for chil- 
 dren to come: 
 
 "There was once a grandfather 
 With white hair and blue eyes 
 A big sly companion 
 Who well concealed his play, 
 Who, clinching hard his jaw 
 As would an old wild boar. 
 Chose his observatory 
 At the foot of a poplar.
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 131 
 
 "Had fifteen hundred thousand 
 Grandchildren in his sleeve 
 All good and living hammers 
 And he being the handle. 
 He gathered in his hands 
 All the rivers and ways 
 Which cross and cut each other 
 From the Meuse to the Oise. 
 
 "The front was flowing back 
 As an enormous tide 
 — France is falling to pieces! 
 The world stood terrified. 
 Suddenly he beckons: 
 In a sublime effort 
 The immense heavy line 
 Stops, and faces the North. 
 
 *Tt is dawn, Genevieve ^ 
 Is leading the white herd 
 Of the mists which arise. 
 Joan is near the flag 
 Swinging her oriflam 
 Marked with fleur de lis. 
 The East is red with flames. 
 Joffre says: Go, my sons!" 
 
 The book of poems called Foi en la France 
 was written by Henri Gheon, during his service at 
 the front as a physician of the artillery. Some 
 poems are hot with action. Others, which he calls 
 "discours lyriques," contain the following passages: 
 1 Sainte Genevieve, guardian saint of Paris.
 
 132 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 All France 
 (For the men who belong to a party) 
 
 "The whole of you, with your faults; for you are not 
 a word, a myth, a dream; and you are no longer a God, 
 in spite of our devotion. 
 
 "Yes, the fragility of the creature — and its force. A 
 human being, with a body, a face, and eyes: it is thus 
 that I wish to see you — and easily recognizable by every 
 one. 
 
 "With a long life behind you — and there is every- 
 thing in a life! But in yours, France, already so many 
 beautiful sleeping centuries . . . 
 
 "With a long life yet before you — for you have kept 
 your youth . . . 
 
 . . . "And of what you have been, nothing to deny! 
 And nothing of what you will be, generous one! 
 
 "Salute, face misted with tears, pure forehead marked 
 with agonies, look of faults, look of faith, mouth of 
 grief, mouth of joy. O human face! 
 
 "Salute, fallible heart, splendid heart, woman with the 
 large cloak where our discords used to warm each other, 
 and where our discords will unite. 
 
 "Salute, earth of errors, earth of glory! Prudent 
 economist who weighs the bread and the salt, improvi- 
 dent hand which opens the closet to the beggar! 
 
 "Salute, gentle one! Salute, rebel! Salute, saint! 
 Salute, warrior! Salute, enigma of destiny, phantom 
 friend! . . . 
 
 "Now, reassembled in your sons, behold you in front 
 of them, like a mother! And all read in your suffering 
 what all before had not understood."
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 133 
 
 This is "On the Great Russian Retreat" . 
 
 "What do I know of you, profound Russia, perpetual 
 retreat of immense and level horizons — of wheat, of 
 swamps and of snow; silver laughter of sounding birch- 
 trees in the heart of white nights, stammering of the mou- 
 jicks in the golden chapels? 
 
 "What do I know of you, profound Russia? Never 
 have I approached you but in spirit — only followed my 
 heart, dreaming of attaining to the poet in the echo of 
 the translated words . . . but even the echo was splen- 
 did! The human metal resounded there, and one could 
 not be mistaken. 
 
 "What do I know of you, profound Russia, and yet I 
 press on in your suite as a poet in Ukraine with his little 
 instrument — two strings upon a sounding board — as far 
 as destiny wishes to lead you, upon the road of your 
 calvary. . . . 
 
 "A few notes, always the same; hardly a song, but 
 everything is said: Your distress of ancient times and 
 which will surpass our times, your tireless plaint, nour- 
 ished by itself, and to which God will surrender." 
 
 Can we now gaze into the future? 
 
 There is no possible comparison with other 
 epochs. All currents are combining and crossing 
 each other, all tendencies have a chance to find tlieir 
 way. Owing to the wide possibilities of interna- 
 tional communication and translation, and to the 
 world-influences which are resulting from it, think-
 
 134 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 ers and artists will dedicate their work, more and 
 more, to the remote and unknown admirers who are 
 waiting for them all over the earth, rather than to a 
 limited surrounding due to mere circumstances. 
 This promises a freer expansion of sincerity, a 
 lesser submission to local limitations. It is a pow- 
 erful source of strength and stimulation to create, 
 to feel that spontaneous, invisible communion which 
 circulates now between young men of all countries. 
 It is as if the world, at the issue of this war, would 
 start from a common point and live on with common 
 terms. 
 
 Are we to see a long period of barren incertitude, 
 during the time of reconstruction, and will all ener- 
 gies be devoted to material work? What I am in- 
 clined to believe is that material enterprise itself 
 will be transformed in its spirit, and might prove 
 as inspiring as any other thing involving energy 
 and passion. I see an infinite broadening of the 
 artist's domain; the way has already been shown by 
 those whom I called our prophets. And I see a 
 growing and more spontaneous interpenetration of 
 science, ethics and art, working combined in the 
 mind of new men. I suppose that literary work 
 will resume its normal, logical development, start- 
 ing at the point where it had stopped in July, 1914. 
 But the men having grown different, a deep revolu-
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 135 
 
 tion will be felt to have taken place within every 
 particular work. 
 
 For these past three years, art and literature were 
 paralyzed. But there will be some triumphant 
 awakening. After the strain of disciplined solidar- 
 ity, a tremendous reaction of free expression will 
 break out, just as a reaction of liberalism will suc- 
 ceed the temporary prussianization" which the 
 young men voluntarily support. This does not 
 mean anarchy, on the contrary.^ I think that after 
 man's destructive power, man's power of creation 
 will reach to an extent in which but few believe 
 today. 
 
 Never was interest in music more developed in 
 France than during the few years which preceded 
 the war. This came after a long period of stag- 
 nation in public taste, when no other alternative 
 existed but academic poverty or hysterico-fashion- 
 able entliusiasms for "virtuosi" who usurped the 
 place of the work they were supposed to serve. No 
 art had been more abandoned. None has been 
 more ardently reviving. Minds of all sorts, turned 
 toward interests of all kinds, now unite in their love 
 for music. Men of science, of letters, of tradition 
 
 iSee P6guy's last lines in Part I.
 
 136 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 and of revolution, join in that common worship. 
 Moreover, the great musicians of today are men of 
 wide culture who live with tlie elite of their time. 
 Thus, writing and criticism about music has been 
 able to give us the books of Romain Rolland, of 
 Riviere, of Suares and this book of G. Jean-Aubry,^ 
 which is to be recommended to any one who wants 
 a complete and intelligent commentary on the pres- 
 ent musical treasure of France. Together with the 
 new musical activity there was a new comprehen- 
 sion of the past, namely, of French music from the 
 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. 
 
 For a long time, it had been believed that French 
 composers were only capable of small, graceful, 
 light constructions. "Are we going at last to under- 
 stand," says Jean-Aubry, "the true grandeur and 
 universal value of a period which saw Vincent 
 d'Indy's symphonic work, Debussy's orchestral 
 compositions, Roussel's 'Evocations,' Florent 
 Schmitt's Psalm and Quintette, Ravel's 'Daphnis et 
 Chloe,' Roger Ducasse's 'Suite Frangaise,' and 
 which has given to the theatre Telleas et Meli- 
 sande,' 'Ariane et Barbe-Bleue,' and 'Penelope'?" 
 
 There also foreign influences had brought stimu- 
 lating and encouraging example. One country 
 
 i"La Musique fran?aise d'aujourd'hui." (Perrin, pub- 
 lisher, Paris.)
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 137 
 
 was, above all, showing the way: it was Russia. 
 Spain was giving, parallel to ours, a splendid gener- 
 ation of young composers; one of them was Grana- 
 dos, killed in the torpedoing of the Sussex. From 
 Germany we had had the gigantic influence of 
 Wagner, which had known its climax some twenty 
 years ago. 
 
 Some of our masters — G. Faure, V. d'Indy, after 
 great Cesar Franck, and Saint-Saens, are widely 
 known already. The works of other elders, Cha- 
 brier, Chausson, Duparc, Magnard (who was killed 
 in 1914 in defending his own house against the 
 invaders), have not yet known all the recognition 
 which time will accord to their names. 
 
 The greatest living figure in French music, 
 Claude Debussy, is also most representative of 
 French genius. He is sensuous, delicate, intelli- 
 gent, refined above all, and he conceals his actual 
 greatness and might under his qualities of grace and 
 reserve, instead of making a tumultuous and 
 colossal display of them. In age and sources of in- 
 spiration Debussy belongs to the "Symbolist" 
 period and, as a fact, he chose his friends, when a 
 young man, among that group which included 
 Maeterlinck, Louys, Regnier, Mallarme, Gide. 
 But by his production he decidedly is a precursor 
 and a master of our present tendencies. He
 
 138 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 worked with the terminating XlXth century, but 
 his work was addressed to the 20th century. His 
 career is a noble example of dignity and aloof- 
 ness from easy and clamorous success. But now 
 his importance is as widely acknowledged as at 
 first it had been denied. Not only is "Pelleas" an 
 original and pure masterpiece, not only is the 
 "Prelude a I'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" a rarity, 
 but Debussy's influence covers all the present epoch 
 and is to be felt in the work of most contemporary 
 composers.^ 
 
 Other masters are Paul Dukas, the author of 
 "Ariane et Barbe-Bleue" and of "UApprenti 
 Sorcier," and his work is solid, serene, healthy. 
 Maurice Ravel, whose clear, ironical, ingenious in- 
 spiration gives him a place which is apart. His 
 "Sonatine," his "Pavane pour une infante defunte" 
 and the suite of "Ma mere I'Oye" (Mother Goose) 
 are now famous. Florent Schmitt, who composed 
 a tragedy of "Salome," a Quintette, a Psalm, and 
 many other works of serious, sensible and skilful 
 character. Deodat de Severac, who comes from 
 Southern France and whose work is devoted to the 
 aspects of nature, of which they give a large, al- 
 
 1 Other principal works of Debussy are: La Mer, the Noc- 
 turnes, the pieces written on Verlaine's, Baudelaire's and 
 Pierre Louys' poems, and his famous pieces for the piano.
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 139 
 
 most vegetally powerful interpretation. Erik 
 Satie, a humourist and also a clever technician, who 
 had an intuition ol the new tenden-cies in music 
 perhaps before Debussy himself. 
 
 According to the high standards of musical art in 
 America, it may be expected that the works of these 
 composers will be executed more and more in this 
 country; French music was usually represented by 
 the less significant light operas when Italian and 
 German music was known through masterpieces. 
 Which is unfair, but of course it was our own fault, 
 since we ourselves ignored for a long time what 
 riches were ours. Since last year, a great step has 
 been made by the sending of some remarkable in- 
 terpreters from Paris to this country, like Casadesus 
 and his "ancient instruments," Joseph Bonnet, the 
 organist, Pierre Monteux, who directed the orches- 
 tra in the Metropolitan Opera-house, Mrs. Gills, and 
 others. Carlos Salzedo for the last two years has 
 been fighting for the cause of French modern music 
 with his excellent "Trio de Lutece." E. Varese 
 directed a performance of Berlioz' Requiem. 
 
 The parallel revival and development of musical 
 interest and of interest in physical culture has log- 
 ically brought us to a revival of dancing as a high 
 form of art. We had this renewal through
 
 140 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 three principal sources of influence. The first 
 was Isadora Duncan. Another was the Rus- 
 sian Ballet, a tremendous inspiration to all young 
 artists in the four years before the war. The 
 third was Jaques-Dalcroze's Eurythmics, which had 
 a deep influence on those who were practising them, 
 and which stood, as it were, at the very converging 
 point of music, dance and physical culture. 
 
 So many admirable treatises have been written 
 on the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture in 
 France and their more modern developments that 
 they need not be dwelt on here. There has long 
 been an interchange between France and America 
 with respect to painting especially, and Monet, 
 Manet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Degas, Puvis de Chav- 
 annes — to mention but a few — are as highly appre- 
 ciated here as say Sargent, Whistler and Mary 
 Cassatt are there. ^ This interchange of art and 
 artists may well be expected to increase after the 
 war, and parenthetically it may be said that the 
 counsels of Whitney Warren and other American 
 architects will be profoundly appreciated when the 
 work of rebuilding ravaged France is taken in hand. 
 
 Our wealth of today is little compared to that of 
 
 1 The presence and success of H. Caro-Delvaille in Amer- 
 ica is another link of that chain.
 
 LITERARY INTERCHANGE 141 
 
 tomorrow. I wonder whether some people are not 
 hiding their heads, as the ostrich does, when they 
 say that life is today without spiritual inspiration, 
 that art is dying, that art is dead. And they are 
 kind enough to shed tears about it. Indeed they 
 have eyes and they see not, they have ears and they 
 hear not. Of our artistic vitality only ignorants or 
 pan-Germanists can be in doubt. 
 
 I have tried in this part of the present book to 
 lead a troop of friendly visitors through some new 
 alleys of tlie garden of France. Alleys newly 
 planted with trees multifarious, robust or delicate. 
 Maybe the readers expected more or something else. 
 Then I ask from them only one thing: let them 
 reserve their conclusions until they find a better 
 guide, and for their disappointment let them accuse 
 me only.
 
 V 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 History of mutual knowledge. False ideas about each 
 other. Principle of our exchanges. France's experience and 
 America's methods. Common task in the organization of 
 peace. The two nations who did most work unselfishly for the 
 world. Psychology of our understanding. Individual com- 
 radeship as a basis for our relations. Responsibilities. 
 
 "Make great persons. The rest will follow." 
 
 — Whitman. 
 
 The Franco-American alliance is not a mere tem- 
 porary co-operation for one limited purpose — this 
 war. I believe that it is involved in the very struc- 
 ture and existence of the two countries. If an old, 
 long-tried understanding has ever existed between 
 two natijns, assuredly we are those two. And if 
 the word "alliance" has a human sense, besides its 
 diplomatic one, assuredly it is so in the case of 
 our relations. When friendship takes the form of 
 such identity of ideals, and results in such a com- 
 mon sacrifice to a common cause, we may say that 
 our alliance, if limited to circumspect interpreta- 
 tion by Foreign Offices, vividly exists in the mind, 
 
 not to say the heart, of every American and every 
 
 142
 
 CONCLUSIONS 143 
 
 Frenchman. There is no treaty which binds us. 
 No parchment with red seal obliges us to love each 
 other. But when compared with certain political 
 constructions which looked so proud and solemn, 
 but which have gone to pieces (the Triple Alliance 
 for instance), this vitality of our old union, unwrit- 
 ten though it be, is one of tlie greatest victories ever 
 won by the Spirit over the Letter. 
 
 We all know when it started. Our treaty in 
 1778 was a peculiar and strange kind of treaty. 
 France gave recognition and help to the young Re- 
 public, and asked for nothing in return. If you 
 read Ambassador Jusserand's book on that first 
 alliance of ours, you will see that the leading im- 
 pulses of the French who went to America, young 
 LaFayette to begin with, were passionate love for 
 liberty, and an irresistible moral urge to help those 
 who were fighting for it. In fact, the Americans 
 were realizing in advance what we only dreamt of 
 at that time. In the same spirit the French fought 
 for Greek freedom in 1820 and for Italy later. 
 The French expedition was the most important sent 
 by France beyond the seas since the time of die 
 Crusades. And was it not a Crusade in a new 
 form? 
 
 For a long time, in spite of parallel experiences 
 in republican life, France and America were too
 
 144 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 distant from each other, and the material conditions 
 too absolutely different for our mutual understand- 
 ing to be other than abstract and sentimental. All 
 definite ideas which we had about each other were 
 more or less inaccurate, if not comically fantastic. 
 "It is difficult," said Abbe Robin, quoted by Mr. 
 Jusserand, "to imagine the idea Americans enter- 
 tained about the French before the war (of Inde- 
 pendence) . They considered them as groaning un- 
 der the yoke of despotism, a prey to superstition and 
 prejudices, almost idolatrous in their religion, and 
 as a kind of light, brittle, queer-shapen mechanism, 
 only busy frizzling their hair and painting their 
 faces, without faith or morals." On the other hand, 
 for years the popular mind of France could not 
 imagine the American otherwise than in Colonel 
 Cody's costume, drawing revolvers from his 
 breeches in order to shoot flies against the wall or 
 uncork bottles of whiskey. 
 
 For many people, until 1914, the French had 
 been personified by the fussy, nervous gentleman 
 who wore a red ribbon in his buttonhole, talked with 
 excessive gestures, knew nothing about foreign 
 countries, and was afraid of a draught. French- 
 men knew little more about Americans, when we 
 expected the modem American to be a milliardaire 
 pork-dealer, despising literature, and presenting his
 
 CONCLUSIONS 145 
 
 wife with gilded grand pianos, but personally en- 
 joying the talking-machine better. 
 
 Those images are rapidly vanishing. But if 
 present impressions of each other are more true to 
 life, I wonder if they are quite so? Only the col- 
 lective, national action of America has yet become 
 known by us, not the silent, personal side of this 
 recent evolution of yours. Only the apparently 
 miraculous virtues of France have recently been 
 revealed and talked about, and she now appears 
 like a sort of Joan of Arc above the clouds — a 
 mystic image which perhaps is not false, but which 
 is incomplete, for there is a living, toiling, thinking 
 country behind that cloud. 
 
 From now on, the young men and women of 
 both sides have to look each other straight in the 
 eyes. The boy of whom I tried to give a sketch in 
 the first part of this book, and the boy who has 
 crossed the sea to fight side by side with -him, are 
 about to give to the alliance its definite meaning. 
 Then will Whitman's generous prophecy of 1871 
 come true : 
 
 "Star crucified! . . . 
 
 Star panting o'er a land of death — heroic land! 
 
 Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land. 
 
 ... Star! O ship of France, beat back and baffled 
 
 long! 
 Bear up, smitten orb! ship, continue on!
 
 146 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 "Sure, as the ship of all, the Earth itself, 
 Product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos, 
 Forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons. 
 Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty, 
 Onward, beneath the sun, following its course, 
 So thee, ship of France! 
 
 "Finish'd the days, the clouds dispell'd. 
 
 The travail o'er, the long-sought extrication. 
 
 When lo! reborn, high o'er the European world, 
 
 (In gladness, answering thence, as face afar to face, 
 
 reflecting ours, Columbia,) 
 Again thy star, France — fair, lustrous star, 
 In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever, 
 Shall beam immortal." 
 
 It seems to me that, starting from very remote 
 points, and living very different lives, we arrive 
 now at a moment when our directions rapidly con- 
 verge. In the space of one generation we shall see 
 American and French conditions of life nearer to 
 each other than at any period of history, especially 
 with respect to moral, cultural and political condi- 
 tions. 
 
 Problems which are now before the conscience of 
 America's young men are very much like those 
 which made our own younger years so fraught with 
 anxiety. There are matters in which mankind's 
 fate is implicated and our thinkers, on both sides, 
 are facing them. Ours is a common task in the 
 organization of peace. Ours are the two nations
 
 CONCLUSIONS 147 
 
 who have worked most unselfishly for the world; 
 and this is a matter not only of pride for us, but 
 above all of responsibility. 
 
 I had an intuition of all this when I decided to 
 come to America, on a mission of which this book 
 is the condensed expression. When I had lived 
 among the Americans for a time they made me 
 realize that my intuition was right. But the results 
 of my observations have gone far beyond what I 
 expected, though in the expected sense. Never 
 shall I be able to acknowledge what encouragement 
 and strengthening of my beliefs has been given to 
 me by all those who have received me in this coun- 
 try. Their desire to Icnow more about France was 
 not less than my own desire to have her better 
 known. Now it is becoming every one's task in 
 both nations to stimulate the exchange of informa- 
 tion, to choose among it, and thus to develop the 
 relations which will result from it. We have to 
 welcome any form of co-operation and exchange, 
 moral or material, official or private. But there is 
 one form of exchange in which I believe most: it 
 is that of individuals. The personal meeting of 
 elements from both countries having corresponding 
 interests, and especially the individual comrade- 
 ship that can be developed between young men and 
 women from France and from America must be
 
 148 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 encouraged by every means. Only those relations 
 are active and flexible enough for the complexity of 
 the new conditions. We admire the work accom- 
 plished by societies and collective organizations,^ 
 because its best result is the extension of oppor- 
 tunities for individuals to come in touch with each 
 other. The best and most effective part of our 
 knowledge we owe not to papers or public meet- 
 ings, but to long and direct conversations with those 
 few specially qualified to inform us about what we 
 are eager to learn. 
 
 Not the least important influence in the mutual 
 relation and formation of Young France and 
 New America is that development of sport, which 
 had its revival in France about twenty years ago, 
 and was in full process of expansion just before this 
 crisis. The last great sporting manifestation was 
 when the Marquis de Polignac organized his "Col- 
 lege d' Athletes" in Rheims, for the practice of 
 Lieutenant Hebert's famous "natural method." 
 France was rapidly working toward a physical 
 
 1 In the first rank of these organizations comes the 
 "Federation de I'Alliance fran^aise aux Etats-Unis et au 
 Canada," which is known by all the friends of France. Thanks 
 to the remarkable activity of some of its members, and first 
 of all Mr. Delamarre, general secretary of the Federation, it 
 has, in a few years, more than doubled the number of its 
 groups in this country.
 
 CONCLUSIONS 149 
 
 transformation of the race. All of us had train- 
 ing in some sport or another. America need not be 
 told that sport brings a morality of its own, a sense 
 of honour and of physical and moral cleanness, of 
 actual and not illusory value in the development of 
 men. The relations of men with women, and the 
 education of women have been transformed in 
 France since what I may call the generalization of 
 sport. But one has to come in personal touch with 
 the younger elements of the country to perceive this 
 change, whose consequences I regard as of first-rate 
 importance. 
 
 More and more we are going to see morals be- 
 coming "a branch of aesthetics." ^ This formula, 
 which would have scared the moralists of the Vic- 
 torian epoch, does not even surprise to-day, and I 
 know that thousands of young men and women are 
 applying it, consciously or not. Combined with an 
 increased consciousness in his destiny, man has de- 
 veloped a more powerful sense of the part he can 
 play in it. 
 
 We live in a feverish and burning period, when 
 the world has become a furnace, and all human 
 values are fused like melting metal. And we feel 
 
 1 Andrd Gide.
 
 150 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA 
 
 that now is the right time to forge and to hammer — 
 to forge and to coin here and now the figure and 
 form of our alliance. 
 
 So, when the crisis is past and when the world 
 grows cold again, we shall find this union of ours 
 fastened and riveted in such a manner that it may 
 never be destroyed. 
 
 Easthampton, August 31, 1917.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Albert I, 44, 114 
 Amiel (D.), 6f 
 Andler, ^'9 
 Arcos, 1-^3 
 
 Baldwin (J. M.), ^ f , 100 
 
 Barres, 6, 8, -25 
 
 Baudelaire, 93 
 
 Bazalgette, 116 
 
 Bergson, 18, 100 
 
 Berlioz, 139 
 
 Bithcll, 111 
 
 Bonnet, 139 
 
 Brooks (Van Wyck), 42 
 
 Butler (S.), 93 
 
 Bynner (Witter), 18, 40, 124 
 
 Caro-Delvaille, 140 
 Casadesus, 139 
 Cassatt (M.), 140 
 Cezanne, 140 
 Chabrier, 13 f 
 Chausson, 13 f 
 Cheran, 33 
 
 Claudel, 2 f , 105, 130 
 Cody, 144 
 Cooper (F.), 93 
 Copeau (J.)> 126 
 
 Daudet, 11 f 
 
 Debussy, 136, 13 f, 138, 139 
 
 Degas, 140 
 
 Delamarre, 148 
 
 Dickens, 8 
 
 Dostoievsky, 8 
 
 Ducasse (R.). 136 
 
 Duharael, 123, 12 f 
 Dukas (P.), 138 
 Dumas (Gel.), 62 
 Duncan (I.), 140 
 Duparc, 13 f 
 
 Eliot (Prof.), 9f 
 EUwood (Prof.), 100 
 
 Fabulet, 98 
 Fargue, 106 
 Farre, 13 f 
 Flambert, 11 f 
 France (A.), 6, 8, 123 
 Franck (C), 13 f 
 Franck (H.), 21-26 
 Franklin, 60 
 Fort (P.), 106, 126 
 
 Gauguin, 140 
 
 Gide (A.), 106, 12 f, 13 f, 149 
 
 Gills, 139 
 
 Gheon, 106, 12 f, 131 
 
 Gourmont, 12 f 
 
 Granados, 13 f 
 
 Grandgent (Prof.), 9f 
 
 Hale (S.), 6f 
 Hamp, 66, 73-86 
 Harte (Bret), 93 
 Havet (M.), 122 
 Hawthorne, 93 
 Hebert, 148 
 Herv^, 56 
 Herwcgh, 92 
 Humi^res (d'), 98 
 
 ISI
 
 152 INDEX 
 
 Indy (d'), 136, 13 f 
 
 Jammes, 103, 104 
 Jaques-Dalcroze, 140 
 Jean-Aubry, 136 
 Jusserand, 41, 61, 143, 144 
 
 Kilmer, 111, 128 
 Kipling, 8 
 
 La Fontaine, 103 
 Larbaud, 121 
 Ledoux (L.), 124 
 Lindsay, 124, 129 
 Lippmann, 6 
 Longfellow, 93 
 Louijs, 13 f 
 LoweU (A.), 9 f, 104, 124 
 
 Maeterlinck, 13 f 
 Magnard, 13 f 
 Mallarme, 93, 102, 13 f 
 Manet, 140 
 Masters (E. L.), 124 
 Monet, 140 
 Monteux, 139 
 Mor^as, 103 
 
 Naudin (B.), 32 
 Noailles (Comtesse M. de), 
 105 
 
 Oppenheim (J.)j 124 
 
 Peguy, 9, 15-20, 26, 106, 126 
 
 Pershing, 62 
 
 Poe, 8, 93, 102, 125 
 
 Polignac, 148 
 
 Porche, 123, 130 
 
 Pribitchevitch, 38 
 
 Puvis de Chavannes, 140 
 
 Ravel, 136, 138 
 
 R^gnier (H. de), 103, 13 f 
 
 Rimbaud, 102 
 
 Riviere (J.), 106, 12 f, 136 
 
 Robin, 144 
 
 Robinson (E. A.), 124 
 
 Rolland (R.), 15, 136 
 
 Remains, 121 
 
 Roussel (A.), 136 
 
 Saint-Saens, 13 f 
 Salzedo, 139 
 Samain (A.), 103 
 Sargent, 140 
 Satie, 139 
 
 Schlumberger (J.), 106 
 Schmitt (F.), 136, 138 
 Seton-Watson, 8 f 
 S^verac (D. de), 138 
 Spire (A.), 106 
 Steed (H. W.), 8f 
 Strettel (A.), HI 
 Suar^s (A.), 106, 12 f, 136 
 Symons (A.), HI 
 
 Tardien, 53 
 Taylor (D.), 6f 
 Thoreau, 93 
 Tolstoi, 8 
 Torrence (R.), 124 
 Turgot, 59 
 Turgueniev, 11 f 
 
 Van Rysselbergh, 10 f 
 Varese (E.), 139 
 Verhaeren, 1, 106-116, 128 
 Viel^-GrifBn, 103 
 Vildrac, 113, 118-121, 12 f 
 
 Wagner, 13 f 
 Warren (W.), 140 
 Wigmore (Prof.), 9f
 
 INDEX 153 
 
 Wilson (W.), 3f, 44, 47, 49, Whitman, 8, 2 f , 30, 40, 93, 
 
 60, 61 116, 125, 142, 145 
 
 Whistler, 140 Wbittier, 93 
 
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